| Smart has been in the news on
a fairly regular basis since the turn of the year. There has been the
launch of the Forfour, the renaming of the City coupe and cabriolet into
the Fortwo and the announcement that the brand is to go into the sports-utility
arena, and more importantly, the US, with the Formore. William Kimberley
went to company headquarters in Boblingen, on the outskirts of Stuttgart,
to talk to Dr Helmut Wawra, the vice president of engineering and design.
Dr Helmut Wawra, vice president of engineering and design at Smart |
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Smart formore: In its expanding portfolio, Smart now has a four-door, four-seater model |
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Smart has got to be one of the phenomena of the last 10 years –
starting from scratch with a product that went against convention, it
has transformed itself from a company selling quirky products into one
that is now looking to flex its muscles outside its core European market.
As part of the DaimlerChrysler group, it obviously has a huge resource
at its disposal:
“Smart is one of the smallest car manufacturers in the world,”
replies Dr Helmut Wawra, vice president of engineering and design. “We
have space here in Boblingen HQ for 1,200 people although we currently
have less than 1,000 people, although there are some resident engineers
from a few suppliers.
“I have only around 600 people in my engineering crew who are developing
four cars – three at the same time with an average of 200-300 engineers
working on each one. That means it’s absolutely impossible to do
the whole work with the 300 engineers. If you compare that to DaimlerChrysler,
Mercedes has on the passenger car side about 8,000 engineers. BMW has
about 6,000 and Toyota 10,00 or 12,000, so 600 makes us a very lean company.
“If you go into the workshops here, you will not find engine test
benches as all that is done by our colleagues at Mercedes-Benz, or at
Mitsubishi in the case of Forfour, while systems suppliers work on other
parts of the car. The Forfour’s total cockpit, for example, is done
by Johnson Controls who undertook the entire detailed engineering work
to our specifications. Doing very detailed specs is one of the secrets
in having a good product at the end, because all the experience you have
from the past becomes part of the specifications. We are very experienced
in this because a large part of my crew all have experience either with
suppliers or with DaimlerChrysler.”
However, outsourcing is not as quite as straightforward as it seems, as
Wawra points out. “At the start the idea was to separate the total
car into 10 modules and we had 10 systems suppliers, but the surprise
was that if you complete a car of 10 optimal modules you will not get
an optimum car. It’s the question of compromise that is why it’s
important for a car company to retain the core competencies. For example,
if the engine engineer is creating the best engine in the world, we will
have a problem with the heating of the car. So at each stage of the development
work we need a fully experienced team that can decide the priorities.
The OEM must do this – it cannot be done by the suppliers. This
is the work we are doing which is organising and controlling the systems
suppliers and deciding on the compromises. This is possible with only
200 engineers. If you look at my staff working on engines, I have five
or six on both diesel and gasoline engines and four on gearboxes. It’s
only possible doing it this way.
“Of course, we have a lot of money to pay the suppliers for their
development work. If you add all that we are spending on development it’s
much more than 200 engineers. If I take my total budget of the year, I
need only 10% of the budget, the suppliers take about 90%.
In January, Smart announced that is was developing a new model line, a
SUV – the Formore – aimed at introducing the brand to the
US which is expected to account for 30,000 units a year. This is half
of the annual output of DaimlerChrysler’s Brazilian plant in Juiz
de Fora, which is halting production on the CKD A-Class this year, to
become the sole producer of this new Smart model, thereby presenting even
more challenges for this small company.
“From March on, this will be our most intensive work,” says
Wawra. “We are thinking about other models, but only in a rough
and design-orientated manner – not even as concepts. In 2006, when
we have the SUV, we have to decide whether it is part of full Smart family
or not, but it will have some special design features that make it recognisably
a Smart, and this is the work we are doing just now, but it’s not
very easy. Maybe we can use the dual colours or the combination of steel
and plastic, possibly some design features of the interior or maybe the
roominess of the car. This is the question we are now thinking about.
There is no detailed work on a concept – just some very rough sketches.”
The intention is to launch the Forfour at the 2006 Detroit Show, but
the precise timetable of its introduction depends upon the tests it has
to fulfil. “You have to pass several tests for the US which take
a great deal of time, especially the emissions ones which are very time-consuming,”
says Wawra. “Neither the car nor the engine have been seen in the
US before and we need at least a year and probably 15 months to pass all
the required tests so we are trying to squeeze our time schedule a little
bit.”
What Wawra expects will be of great help in developing the Smart Forfour
to US tastes is the experience of Andreas Renschler, Smart’s executive
vice president, with the ML. For four years from 1993, he was the president
and CEO of Mercedes-Benz US International and responsible for the newly
commissioned M-Class plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama as well as the worldwide
development, production, purchasing and marketing of the model.
“Mr Renscheler is very experienced with this car but we have to
consider what is expected of an SUV in general and what is the expectation
that is special to the Mercedes brand. Maybe there isn’t any expectation
for the Smart brand so we have to create it. We have this experience from
a technical point of view and we know the good and bad points on the ML,
now we have to extract what is special for the Mercedes brand –
there are some things we cannot afford as the Smart must be cheaper than
a Mercedes – nevertheless we can ask for a certain premium from
the customer. This is what we get in Europe and we expect to get it in
the US market as well. So we have to think about the common things –
not just in parts, but in the SUV feeling of the car.”
As with the Smart philosophy, the supply chain will play a vital role
in the development, engineering and production of the new model and yet
Wawra does not anticipate any severe problems with it being built in another
continent.
“Our strategy in appointing suppliers is whether they can do the
development work in Europe, and whether they have an existing plant in
Brazil so they know the special problems of this market, of the workforce
there and of the total economic situation in the country. It’s simply
not possible for us to do all this work. We will use Brazilian suppliers
for the less important parts. We expect that half of my crew working on
this project will be in that country in the months during the ramp up
phase.”
“When we did the Forfour with Mitsubishi, we sometimes had 60-80
Japanese engineers here in Germany and in the very early phase, when the
design work was very important, when we had to find some compromises between
all the different expectations, we had around 60-80 of our engineers in
Mitsubishi’s development centre in Japan. I expect the same thing
will happen in Brazil.”
Although the Formore is being built on a different side of the ocean,
Wawra does not expect the same difficulties as have been encountered when
jointly developing the Forfour/Colt with Mitsubishi. “For all my
years with Smart and Mercedes before that, I have never seen such a difficult
and complicated project as is currently being undertaken in Nedcar plant
in Born, where the car is being built.
“There was a development team in Boblingen, there was some development
work on the Forfour carried out in Japan, the diesel engine was made by
our colleagues at DaimlerChrysler, the gasoline engine was designed by
our Mitsubishi colleagues in Japan, the diesel engine will be produced
in Germany in Stuttgart-Unterturkheim and the gasoline engine will be
produced in Marienfelde. This is one of the most complicated projects
I ever did, so it’s no problem for us to go to Juiz a Fora just
to build a car!
“Working with Mitsubishi we had to deal with different cultures,
different philosophies and what is the right way to develop a car within
these two companies. Even in Germany if we are working, for example, with
BMW, there is the question of how to do the work in the right way as it’s
absolutely different in both companies. Even if we use the same German
word, the understanding behind it is different. If you recognise that,
it’s normally too late. So this was one of the most difficult works
in this project. However, we used English as a common language which was
a benefit as it was foreign to both parties. It’s more difficult
to work with American carmakers because they have their own language.
German and Japanese use very easy words as it’s a foreign language
where the Americans do not.”
Asked whether the intention is to take Smart to other regions of the world,
namely China, Wara replies that the models to date have not been particularly
suitable.
“Up until now with our City Coupe and the Roadster we have not had
the product for the basic demand of mobility of the modern customer. We
have special answers for special questions. We may have the answer with
regard to a car used in the city, but until the advent of the Forfour,
we haven’t had a car for the normal family which needs to have four
of five seats. With the Forfour we have for the first time the car for
a normal customer. The City Coupe and Roadster have tended to be the second
car, or even the third, in a family. We expect the Forfour to be the first
and second family car.
“With regard to the demands from the market in China, it’s
a kind of developing one. They possibly need more pick-ups than Smart
City coupes. They don’t have the problem of parking spaces, expect
in some places. We have to have the product family for such a market and
this is one of the sketches we do in thinking about a car for the Chinese
market. However, we are waiting because we will see what Mercedes-Benz
does in the market there. We also have a good relationship with Mitsubishi
that has a good presence in that market, one of the reasons that DaimlerChrysler
bought into the company, and maybe at the moment it has a better product
for that market. So we are waiting a little bit to see what is going on
there to see whether the expectations are met and that the next 10 years
will see the Chinese market grow as forecast. Actually I don’t see
a huge market for Smart there as I think it’s a bit early for the
brand there, so we are waiting and looking what the others are doing.”
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