GM SupplyPower. This customizable, secure Web portal provides suppliers with relevant GM news, guidelines and specifications, and contact information. SupplyPower covers a lot of ground, including materials, manufacturing, logistics, purchasing and finance, and it helps reduce the personnel and time required to exchange information with suppliers.

Shared "Virtual Factory" Tools. Massive visualization tools allow GM to determine the cost and effect of various changes to factories, factory floor configurations and tooling. They simulate everything from the rate at which material can be unloaded from trucks with a given dock configuration to the likely traffic patterns on roads surrounding the shop.

Joint Product Design. In 1998, GM’s design-to-production cycle took three years. Competitors required two at that point, according to Kirk Gutmann, GM’s product development information officer. Today GM has cut its cycle to a year and a half. Gutmann says the competition is still faster by a few months, but the playing field is more level.

The dramatic reduction of the design cycle started with GM getting its internal systems in order, a process that involved standardizing on a single system (Unigraphics), a single product data management system (I-Man) and a single data model for all of GM’s 14 design engineering centers. After getting the ball rolling on intra-GM collaboration, Gutmann’s group started working toward achieving closer links in the design process. Co-designing a given automotive part helps ensure that the supplier can meet the specifications for that part and also begin the retooling and production process earlier. GM shares both design tools and data files with suppliers, and partially or fully underwrites the cost of software licenses for select suppliers.

It’s going to take some time for true co-design to pervade the auto industry supply chain; a 2001 research study by the Center for Automotive Research found only 12 percent of the respondents were in joint product design with other suppliers. Meanwhile, the competition won’t stand still. DaimlerChrysler, for example, has formed a B2B infrastructure group dubbed E-Connect and recently boasted time reductions of 60 percent to 90 percent in certain steps of its design process. Nevertheless, GM has made great progress in this area.

No small irony: A retiring GM lifer recently commented to Wagoner, "If you keep it up, you’ll be able to make cars as fast as we did in the 1950s," when vehicle complexity and regulatory requirements were simpler and the cycle took one year.

The Big Picture

With GM forging so many e-business connections, the fate of eGM is a moot point. In fact, GM’s B2C efforts are far less important than the B2B work. And the approach to e-business projects reflects a fundamental change in GM’s thinking, which should prevail regardless of eGM’s future.