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EP 12 Part 2: John Stech: Did DaimlerChrysler perish from irreconcilable intercultural conflict?
38 Plays19 days ago
In today’s Auto Ethnographer episode, the second of two parts, host John Stech dives deeper into his experience at DaimlerChrysler, covering his stay at the Chrysler side of the family.
John’s assignment at Chrysler International, a division of the company responsible for 120 non-NAFTA markets, was to revamp the volume planning system in time for a major new product offensive. In doing so he had to gain trust with an experienced Chrysler team and get their support in building a modernized approach to sales and production planning. This effort ended up impacting not only the International markets, but also caused the American, Canadian, and Mexican markets to change their approach to forecasting and vehicle ordering.
In the closing days of the merger, John had moved to Egypt (the topic of Episode 11) where he first strove to harmonize the frayed working relationship between Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler. This effort stopped short once DaimlerChrysler’s CEO, Dr. Dieter Zetsche announced the sale of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management. Later John would have to begin the sales company wind-down process to separate the company into two new subsidiaries, Mercedes-Benz Egypt and Chrysler Egypt.
This is the second half of John’s personal story through nine years of experiences at DaimlerChrysler, as seen from the front row on both sides of the merged entity. He understands that his experience was different than that of others. While some viewed the merger positively, many derided one or the other merged partner.
Please share your thoughts or opinions with The Auto Ethnographer by visiting the website at https://www.auto-ethnographer.com or by leaving comments on the social media sites at LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Dynamics
00:00:00
Speaker
My German boss told me that I had to be harder. I had to be more forceful. I had to really push things through. But I had to say I resisted. It wasn't the American way.
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Autoethnographer. I'm John Steck, your host on this journey. We travel the globe to bring you stories about culture and the global automotive industry. Fasten your seatbelt and let's get started.
Daimler-Chrysler Merger Challenges
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to part two of episode 12. Today we finish the conversation on the failure of the Daimler-Chrysler merger. In case you missed part one, I would suggest going back, listening to that one prior to starting this episode.
00:00:41
Speaker
So I received an offer to move to Daimler Chrysler's headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and to take on this role of being the head of volume planning and sales planning and sales reporting for about 120 different countries that were outside of the NAFTA region.
00:01:03
Speaker
I thought this was really exciting. I had always seen that there would be a huge opportunity to work on both sides of the Daimler Chrysler family. So I jumped on it. I would pack up my bags. I would move my family in October 2002 out to Michigan.
00:01:17
Speaker
out to michigan And I would be working on the ninth floor at Chrysler International in the world headquarters of Chrysler, which at that time was the second largest office building on the planet, second only to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
00:01:35
Speaker
Very exciting.
00:01:38
Speaker
Now, without getting into too much detail about the the vast differences between Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler volume planning, I can tell you I had a challenge ahead of me.
00:01:49
Speaker
the the thinking process that went into the volume planning and the philosophy in the way that the factories worked and even just the demand for the product was vastly different.
00:02:01
Speaker
And let me just sum it up in ah in a nutshell. So the the Chrysler methodology was based on a backwards looking, historically looking sales based algorithm.
00:02:14
Speaker
That would then calculate how much production is needed to fuel the sales going forwards. And it was adjusting for seasonality and and and so on and so forth in the in this model, in this algorithm.
00:02:27
Speaker
It was always assumed that manufacturing can build as many cars as sales would ever need. Because in the past, for the most part, that was in fact true. there There would always be more production production capacity in the US factories, to the Canadian and the Mexican factories than the markets could swallow.
00:02:47
Speaker
The Mercedes-Benz planning system was based on a completely different set of principles. And since 1995, 1996 timeframe, Mercedes had continuously been introducing new product to its portfolio.
00:03:03
Speaker
You had the new E-Class in 1994. Not long after you had SLK being added, you had A-Class being added, you had the M-Class being added.
00:03:15
Speaker
So all of these new products you know, the CLK model after model after model was being added to the product lineup. And oftentimes at the beginning of the launch and even deep into the life cycle of the product, they couldn't build enough cars for the demand of the customer.
00:03:33
Speaker
So the factory was always a little bit behind. of Of course, there were exceptions to that. and there were some cars that, you know, had to be pushed a little bit on the market, not um that, that were not, you know, in in as much high demand.
00:03:46
Speaker
Now, the way that the Mercedes-Benz system worked was it was based on production, right? You were limited by the amount of cars that you could sell. So you would have a sales forecast, how many you could sell.
00:03:58
Speaker
You would ask the factory for a production allocation. The factory would tell you yes or no, we can build it, we can't build it. And then you would have a sales forecast submitted to the headquarters that was either constrained by the production, so you could sell more if you had more, or you were selling the maximum amount possible based on market demand um because the production was available.
Planning Methodology Conflicts
00:04:23
Speaker
So very, very different philosophical differences in the planning. So why would somebody want to bring bring me who who was steeped in this Mercedes-Benz methodology out to Auburn Hills?
00:04:37
Speaker
Well, Chrysler stood at the threshold of a completely new era at that point in time. Up until now, about 90% of the product was sold in the US, s Canada and Mexico, and about 10% was exported and sold in other markets around the world.
00:04:56
Speaker
Now, under the new Daimler Chrysler regime, this was supposed to change. There was supposed to be a big product offensive with all sorts of models that were more tuned towards international markets.
00:05:09
Speaker
They would add diesel engines, they would add right-hand drives, they would add smaller cars into the mix that would be more attractive to people in countries located in Europe or in Asia or other parts of the of the planet.
00:05:25
Speaker
this product defensive would result in a lot of complexity at the factory, right? With all of those different variants that i just mentioned. And so as a result of that, it was assumed that the manufacturing would have some degree of difficulty in ramping up with all of the manufacturing complexity of the different variants and that there would be constraints, that there would be more demand than the factory would be able to produce.
00:05:54
Speaker
And this would put Chrysler very much into the same situation that Mercedes had had for the past roughly decade. The Assumption was not not bad. It was a good assumption to take.
00:06:06
Speaker
But it also meant that ah the entire planning system at Chrysler, especially for the small markets around the world, had to be turned on its head and a completely different philosophy had to be implemented. And that that was my job.
00:06:22
Speaker
I was supposed to come in there and change that philosophy um to plan differently in these 120 countries. and to then bring in and introduce that same web-based ah planning system for Mercedes-Benz that I had just implemented at Mercedes-Benz USA.
00:06:43
Speaker
Now I'm supposed to do that for those 120 countries around the world. This would not be an easy task for a couple of different reasons. ah Number one was trust.
00:06:55
Speaker
um I came from Mercedes-Benz. I was German-American. you know Do they trust me? There was always that that that that question of trust between the American side and German side and the family. And the question was whether I was just going to be another person coming in and telling them what to do at Chrysler, um that that I knew all the answers and that they didn't.
00:07:21
Speaker
that That was a question. How do I overcome that? And I had to overcome this potential for lack of trust by building it, by by showing that I really, truly wanted Chrysler to be successful. I wanted Chrysler you know to to make it in the future and to show my loyalty and my enthusiasm for the for the Jeep and the Chrysler and the Dodge brands, as well as to really teach the team about why the company works differently at Mercedes-Benz versus Chrysler, just to bridge the gap, to take a little bit of that you unknown out of the equation.
00:08:03
Speaker
Some of the team that I worked with, they had been there for over 40 years at the company. having vast experience that I could never possibly match up to. And so, you know it was daunting to me to work with them and to try to explain how we probably have to do things a little bit different than they had experienced in in the past over their 40 year career.
Overcoming Team Resistance
00:08:27
Speaker
For me, this was a daunting task. I respected them and their experience very much. um But at the same time, I also had to at the same uh in that same action move forward and and implement new processes and implement new ways of thinking new ways of doing things i spent countless time so many hours during and after working hours to explain and and demystify the mercedes-benz way of planning and the philosophy and the way of thinking
00:09:01
Speaker
I didn't say, i made sure of it, I did not say that it was a better way. It's just a different way. and And Chrysler was going to be coming into an era where that different way probably matches up more to what Chrysler had to do than in the past.
00:09:22
Speaker
I answered questions. I illustrated with lots of examples, kind of doing some comparing contrast. And I showed some printouts from the Mercedes-Benz USA system just to to kind of demystify what am I talking about? How does it work? What are some of the strengths?
00:09:38
Speaker
And how could we make those adaptations between you the Mercedes-Benz system and the and the Chrysler system. The company functioned differently. So you couldn't just overlay the one on the other.
00:09:49
Speaker
there There had to be actually some adaptation because the overall company had different workflows and and assumptions built into the the structure of the company. But again, a lot of it was the human element.
00:10:02
Speaker
I had to really display my my loyalty, and my willingness to make Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge a success, especially on this and this global push with the product offensive.
00:10:15
Speaker
As much as possible, I try to avoid making direct comparisons between Mercedes and Chrysler.
00:10:24
Speaker
Be honest. I think all of you have had that that a new employee that's come in from another company and every five minutes they make a comparison to their old company. And after a while it gets old, right?
00:10:35
Speaker
And I know that and you know that. So it it was... um you know It was challenging for me to to give examples and and to you know walk through and illustrate things without making that direct comparison, making them feel, you know my team feel that Mercedes-Benz knew how to do it right and everything Chrysler
Production and Forecasting Issues
00:10:55
Speaker
did was wrong. That that was absolutely not the case.
00:10:58
Speaker
It was just a time for change. This was extremely stressful. Again, as I mentioned before, the international markets for which we were responsible only had about 10% of the sales of the corporation.
00:11:14
Speaker
So it it was a ah very, very small part. So in in some way, the the tail was wagging the dog. we asked the larger markets to adapt to something different when in fact, the smaller markets were the ones that were kind of suffering under the old planning system and planning methodology.
00:11:33
Speaker
One of the issues that that that came up was just the way that orders were placed, right? There would be a production plan, which cars would be produced all the way down to the trim levels. And the the issue was that the orders would come in from Canada and Mexico and US and they would not match up to the orders or excuse me, the production plan of trim level mix.
00:12:01
Speaker
And as a result, the factory would at the last moment try to adjust their production plan to the incoming orders. And that resulted in millions of parts millions of dollars of parts being scrapped every month, just as a result of this mismatch between the orders and the production.
00:12:24
Speaker
Well, that was the the tail wagging the dog because it was killing the international production plan as as they were swinging around the production for nafta A lot of times it simply meant that we, the international markets, didn't get our cars.
00:12:42
Speaker
They were simply lost somehow in this big changing around of the production program. So the overall system needed more, let's say, discipline um and and a little bit more, let's say foresight ahead of time, better planning to, and better forecasting in order for this entire thing to work so that all countries around the globe would be satisfied with their with their production allocations and nobody would be starved for product.
00:13:14
Speaker
And that no parts would be scrapped on the order that they were being scrapped in the past. As I had embarked on this journey of change, you really pushing not only for the change amongst the 120 countries that I was responsible for, but ultimately also being a little bit the instigator for change for the large markets, it was stressful.
00:13:39
Speaker
It was a stressful time. My boss, my German boss told me that I had to be harder. I had to be more forceful. I had to really push things through. But I had to say I resisted.
00:13:52
Speaker
I resisted this this order to do this. It wasn't the American way. It might work once. to tell somebody what to do in ah in a top-down way. But after a while, people don't listen to you anymore. And I needed, in order to implement this this this massive sea change, I needed to have cooperation.
00:14:13
Speaker
Why? Because I didn't want people to comply only once. I needed the entire team and the entire system to work every single month with every monthly submission of the plan.
00:14:28
Speaker
So I couldn't come in like a freight train. i had to come in as people have said with a velvet hammer.
00:14:37
Speaker
I have to say after a year, I had another conversation with my with my boss and he told me that, okay, my approach did in fact work and I could continue in his eyes to use this you know more American style approach, which which was to come to a bit more of ah ah a cooperative you know conclusion and and cooperation with the team, but rather than just coming in heavy fisted and and you know demanding things change for for our countries.
Merger's Technological and Strategic Failures
00:15:11
Speaker
um In the end, it it was a difficult transition on the US, Mexico, you know Canadian side together with us.
00:15:23
Speaker
But I have to admit, I still have contact with a few people that lived through that process with me. And we still both grimace and smile at the cooperation that we had throughout that episode.
00:15:38
Speaker
So there we were, we were waiting for this product offensive to start. And we were ready with the production planning, with all of the planning systems, the product management for the international um markets was you strategizing along the way.
00:15:57
Speaker
But something was not right. There were certainly shortcomings in this product offensive, in in the product planning and the product strategy. So because I was responsible for volume planning, not only in the current timeframe, but also three years out,
00:16:16
Speaker
I sat in a lot of strategic product planning meetings so that I could understand what was in the pipeline and how do we start to plan those products into the, into the volume plan and how do we work with the different countries to get their forecasts for those different products, you know, into our three year forecast.
00:16:35
Speaker
And by participating in all these conversations, I could see the challenge between the Mercedes Benz and the Chrysler side of the business. I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the podcast that I didn't think that the ultimate failure of Daimler Chrysler was cultural.
00:16:54
Speaker
I don't think so. I think a lot of it hinged on this whole concept of synergies and savings and efficiencies. And I think here in the product, that's where it fell short.
00:17:08
Speaker
So during the entire nine years of Daimler Chrysler, the product and the technology sharing and the and the platform sharing was incredibly scant. It didn't happen.
00:17:21
Speaker
Essentially the head of the Mercedes-Benz brand at that time, he forbade the use of any new recurrent technology currently in Mercedes-Benz products to also find its way into Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge products.
00:17:41
Speaker
If anything, Chrysler was supposed to get essentially yesterday's technology. As a result, here's one example. Mercedes-Benz launched a brand new r one seventy one SLK.
00:17:56
Speaker
It was the second generation of that particular model. Well, only at that point in time could Chrysler have the r one seventy previous generation platform and do something with that platform.
00:18:10
Speaker
The result was the Chrysler Crossfire, a pretty cool, I have to say, two-seat vehicle that once you got inside, you immediately saw that this was a derivative from the Mercedes SLK, but very fun to drive, little product.
00:18:25
Speaker
Again, it was yesterday's technology because it wasn't allowed to overlap with the current generation SLK. You had the Chrysler 300, the Dodge Charger, the Dodge Challenger,
00:18:38
Speaker
ah You had the original 2003 Chrysler Pacifica. And all of those had a variety of W210E class suspension components, like a handful of components.
00:18:53
Speaker
But that particular product, the W210E class, it started in 1994 and it ended in 2003. So essentially, when all of those new Chrysler products came onto the market again,
00:19:08
Speaker
They had yesterday's Mercedes-Benz component integrated into them. So even the challengers and the chargers, which were produced as recently as 2024, they can trace still to that time, some of their components back to 1994 of the original W210 E-Class.
00:19:30
Speaker
And then there were the two products that I had been deeply involved with at the beginning of the merger, the M-Class and the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Those vehicles only shared a platform very late, very late. In fact, by the time the new Grand Cherokee launched in 2010 and the next generation M-Class launched in 2011, the merger was already...
00:19:54
Speaker
the merger was already finished It was done. it had failed. But somehow the two companies still shared that platform ah after well after the merger had been dissolved.
00:20:07
Speaker
and And both, frankly, went on to become quite successful products in their own right using the same platform. Again, too little, too late. There weren't really savings.
00:20:19
Speaker
There weren't really synergies. and the parts bins were kept pretty much separated by a fence. So the savings, the synergies, the opportunities that were touted as a reason for the merger, they didn't occur.
00:20:38
Speaker
They didn't happen. Nothing materialized. So as a result, the merger was not in a good path. It wasn't ah giving the results that it needed. And worst of all, from a shareholder perspective, a huge amount of the shareholder value had evaporated in the stock.
00:20:57
Speaker
The shareholders simply didn't have confidence that this thing would work. Because of that, Jürgen Schrempf was out. He left in 2005. And he was replaced by dr Dieter Zetche.
00:21:13
Speaker
Zetche had been beloved in Auburn Hills. He had been for a little over five years. He was the CEO of the Chrysler side of the family, guiding this company you know through its resurgence, through the product offensive.
00:21:27
Speaker
And now he would rise to be the CEO of the global corporation. There were certainly some hopes that things would change in Stuttgart in 2005-2006 as a result of Dietzetsche ascending to this global CEO role.
00:21:45
Speaker
Unfortunately, people would be disappointed rather than excited by the result. In episode 11, of the Auto Ethnographer podcast, I talked about my experience of moving to Egypt and running the Daimler Chrysler operation there as managing director, responsible for both the Mercedes-Benz side and the the Chrysler side of the of the family.
Egypt Operations and Strategic Shifts
00:22:08
Speaker
As I mentioned, my primary responsibility and and mission was to smooth out some of the frictions that were happening between the two sides of the house.
00:22:19
Speaker
um Certainly the sales and marketing, they were separated because the brands have their own identities and and those units could could work separately. But some of the back office area, the human resources, the finance, legal, um customer service, some of those areas did work ah together, supporting both sides of the house.
00:22:39
Speaker
And there was friction. it It didn't always work in cooperation with either side, the Chrysler side or the Mercedes-Benz side. So my mission was to figure out how to get some harmony,
00:22:53
Speaker
and and better efficiency and and more success, better sales um and and higher profitability in the market ah by by getting a more harmonious and and more efficiently functioning national sales company.
00:23:09
Speaker
Just as a note, Egypt was, i think at that time, the only sales company in any country that started as a as a Chrysler company and absorbed Mercedes-Benz into it.
00:23:24
Speaker
Everywhere else on the planet, whether it was in Japan or in Germany or France or anywhere, It generally started out as a Mercedes-Benz company, which then absorbed or started ah a Chrysler side of the business.
00:23:42
Speaker
But ultimately, it was a Mercedes-Benz company and and Mercedes-Benz was typically the the highest focus of those sales companies around the the globe. In this case, there had been my predecessor, someone who had come from Chrysler, a life lifelong Chrysler manager, um with more focus on Chrysler.
00:24:01
Speaker
and And that was the the reason for my being installed, was to ah put some more focus on Mercedes-Benz and help that brand grow, especially as it was about to launch a locally produced version of the S-Class.
00:24:16
Speaker
The first time that the S-Class would ever be produced, outside of Zindlfingen in Germany. So I spent months trying to get this this harmony, trying to bring everyone together to work together in a more cooperative way between the brands in the you know front office and the back office of the company.
00:24:40
Speaker
And then the big announcement hit.
00:24:43
Speaker
Ironically, it was on Valentine's Day, February of 2007,
00:24:49
Speaker
When Dieter Zeche, whom I just mentioned as the former CEO at on the Chrysler side of the family, he announced that, quote, all options were on the table for Chrysler, unquote.
00:25:04
Speaker
What did that mean? It basically meant that he put a for sale sign on the roof of the Chrysler building in Auburn Hills. And this would have a lot of repercussions for me personally, in my role managing both sides of the house in Egypt.
00:25:22
Speaker
Exactly three months later, after this, all options are on the table announcement, it was announced on May 14th that Chrysler was being sold to Cerberus Capital Management.
00:25:36
Speaker
ah Dr. Tsetse, as a result of this, went from being beloved in Auburn Hills to being reviled. you He sold out the company.
00:25:48
Speaker
He you know, push them out and sold them off um and essentially took a lot of the the good stuff with him with Mercedes Benz.
00:26:00
Speaker
So for example, there was a factory that Chrysler had been operating since the early nineteen eighty s one One of the first foreign factories in China, in Beijing, Daimler took that.
00:26:13
Speaker
R&D, the real basic R&D, had been closed at Chrysler and effectively moved over to Stuttgart and handled by the Mercedes-Benz side of the family. So as a result, Chrysler didn't have any truly you know innovative R&D immediately at the time of the separation.
00:26:31
Speaker
And there were other examples of things that that Daimler kind of picked and choose ah different parts and bits and and kept those and then left and sold the rest to Cerberus Capital Management.
00:26:47
Speaker
This announcement of the sale, as you can imagine, this this completely blew up all of my efforts for the past half year of trying to build harmony inside of Daimler Chrysler Egypt.
00:26:59
Speaker
you You can imagine that um you know, now that they were going to separate, that there was no reason for anyone to cooperate with anybody ah but between the two sides of the house.
00:27:10
Speaker
And I indeed had to to remain there for the next seven months till roughly the end of the year ah before I would move on to my next assignment.
00:27:21
Speaker
And it became increasingly challenging to you to get cooperation but between all of the different departments in the company as they knew that they would be moving off into you know separate and distinct futures in in the coming months.
00:27:38
Speaker
Now, they were still owned, the entire entity was still owned by Daimler, so they really called the shots. It was not until later that a Chrysler Egypt would be formed that Chrysler could take its own decisions.
00:27:51
Speaker
But for now, the two lived uncomfortably under one roof. you know As I left, I had to be replaced not only by one successor but i had two i had a mercedes-benz successor and i had a chrysler successor and even though those two individuals knew each other and liked each other personally There were political forces coming from Stuttgart, which forced the Mercedes-Benz side to really make life somewhat uncomfortable for the Chrysler side, you really pushing them out as fast as possible from the from the company, finding their office, moving to another place.
00:28:32
Speaker
ah Things that included, for example, turning off ah door ID cards so that people couldn't enter and leave the the office so easily. So little little things like this.
00:28:44
Speaker
But that was indicative of, let's say, a little bit of a spiteful divorce. And this would be you know the the scene around the world as Daimler, as I mentioned before, owned all of the sales companies and then ejected Chrysler from them to go and form their own sales companies country by country by country.
00:29:06
Speaker
So again, rather uncomfortable situation, but something that had to be navigated ah by me, for example, between the Americans, the Germans, and also the Egyptians locally.
Post-Merger Reflections and Cultural Insights
00:29:20
Speaker
Shortly after the announcement that the company was separating, I was asked, which side do I want to land on? i had spent years on the Mercedes-Benz side. I had spent years on the Chrysler side, more or less half and half. you know Where do I want to go with the divorce? Which parent do I want to go live with in the future?
00:29:42
Speaker
I opted staying with the Chrysler side, as I had indicated in episode 11. after the sale to Cerberus. The international operations would desperately need people who understood how to work in in an international environment um and and how to translate that back to the global headquarters.
00:30:01
Speaker
And you know one by one by one, as the you know offices were being ah evicted from Mercedes-Benz offices, a decision had to be taken. Over my nine years within this construct of Daimler Chrysler,
00:30:19
Speaker
I always had my eyes open and I always watched ah these cultural interactions ah but between the two sides. And I just want to come back to the first thought that I had on the podcast.
00:30:30
Speaker
Was this a purely cultural failure between the Germans and the Americans, or was it something different? Again, i would say no No, it was not pure.
00:30:45
Speaker
Yes, there were frictions. Yes, there were issues between the way that the two sides worked within the company, but those can be overcome. Those can be overcome regardless of how frustrating they may be.
00:30:58
Speaker
Those are things that can be overcome. you know Americans have worked at German companies for decades in the United States and it's successful and it's harmonious and they've they've learned how to adapt.
00:31:11
Speaker
and it's happened for decades. Americans have worked at German companies. Germans have worked at American companies in Germany and have been successful because they, they learn how the other side does business and they adapt themselves to it.
00:31:25
Speaker
They learn how to communicate effectively. They learn how to negotiate effectively. They learn how to make business decisions together effectively.
00:31:38
Speaker
However, this situation was a bit different. it's It's not an American going to work in a in a German company you know to to find a job. This was a longstanding, proud American company, which had overnight turned half German with the kind of dominating half being the German side.
00:32:00
Speaker
There was resistance at Chrysler. There was resistance to change. And there was even, of course, resentment at being perceived as as existing as the the junior partner in the relationship.
00:32:16
Speaker
There was resistance to change. There was resistance to doing things a new way. And frankly, in Stuttgart, there was also, very little effort actually made to understand how the American half of the company worked.
00:32:33
Speaker
There was no adaptation. With MBUSA, Stuttgart can more or less tell them what to do. There would be pushback from the American team there. But at the end of the day, they could force the local team to do what they wanted. But this was different with with Chrysler because it was ah large, iconic American company that was resistant to change and without meeting halfway on either side.
00:33:01
Speaker
Certainly, there was there was some issue with regards to you know the expectation of success. But in my opinion, that cultural clash, which certainly there was some, was not the ultimate deal breaker.
00:33:18
Speaker
The ultimate deal breaker goes right down to money talks. Money talks, and when the share price plummeted throughout those nine years, the shareholders, you know they revolted.
00:33:31
Speaker
They were upset. They would stand up at the annual shareholder meeting in Stuttgart and you know they they were able to speak directly to the executive team you know with an open mic portion of the meeting and and they made their you know dissatisfaction very well known.
00:33:51
Speaker
No, the real problem was that the efficiencies, the synergies and all of the savings were evasive. They never happened. They never occurred.
00:34:05
Speaker
Ultimately, it was the fact that there was a ah brick wall set up between the two brands with respect to the product, with respect to the innovation flowing amongst all the brands.
00:34:18
Speaker
The ability to share components ah was was simply not there. Helmut Gorsa on episode three spoke about air conditioning units,
00:34:29
Speaker
and how they had spent hours and days talking about how it was not possible to use a Jeep air conditioner unit in a Mercedes, nor a Mercedes air conditioner unit in a Jeep, even if the customers never see what this box behind the dashboard actually looks like.
00:34:48
Speaker
But none of that ever came to pass. A lot of it was was blocked you know by philosophy of this, let's say, brand separation, which then also flowed into 100% product separation.
00:35:03
Speaker
So that's my take on the nine years of Daimler Chrysler. Those are my experiences. It's it's my opinions. I'm really sure that other people will have different opinions from this and I would love to hear them.
00:35:17
Speaker
You can go to the website www.auto-ethnographer.com and leave your opinion there. Send it in to me. You can go on YouTube, write the comment directly ah below the video and let me know what you think.
00:35:35
Speaker
Or you can also go on some of the social media like LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram and let me know what you think about my opinion about Daimler-Chrysler. it It was not a cultural failure, a little bit, yes, but primarily it was a failure based on lack of cooperation, lack of sharing, driven essentially by by one office in Stuttgart.
00:36:01
Speaker
I thank you for listening this week. I hope it was interesting. This was a ah very long journey, nine years of my life and countless of other people who were a part of this this long journey.
00:36:15
Speaker
Hopeful at the beginning, not as hopeful at the very end when when the thing fell apart. But i look forward to having additional conversations about this in the future.
00:36:29
Speaker
That's it for this week's episode. Again, please send me your comments, send me your agreement or disagreement on whether you think I'm right or wrong about this assessment.
00:36:40
Speaker
And I look forward to having a dialogue. I might even have to take some of those comments and disagreements and make a ah mini episode just to share some of the feedback that I've received.
00:36:52
Speaker
Until next week, keep on driving.
00:36:56
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on today's journey. Please remember to like and subscribe to The Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment. For more information, visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com.
00:37:08
Speaker
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