According to some of those responsible for the Dearborn firm, the development of the new Ford Maverick could be shortened by more than 2 years thanks to the elimination of part of the bureaucracy and the formal processes typical of the usual design process of the brand, being These are replaced by more informal but faster and more direct processes.
Several Ford Motor Company officials revealed a few days ago that the development process of their new compact pick-up, the recently presented Ford Maverick, had managed to be accelerated to the point of shortening it in just over two years, although at that time they did not get to discover how they had achieved such a feat.
An American publication has been able to speak with one of the executives of the company involved in the development of a new compact pick-up and they have revealed what was the secret to be able to shorten the development of the new Maverick by no less than 25 months, something incredible if we consider that it is a totally new model, created from scratch.
Although this is not the first time that Ford uses this name, the truth is that the Maverick is not related to any of the previous vehicles marketed under this name. The last time it was used, it was used to give a name to a remarked version of the Nissan Terrano 2 marketed in Europe.
It’s been a long time since Ford had a compact-size pick-up and therefore they did not have an example to rely on. Still, the new Ford Maverick is based on the same platform as the Ford Kuga / Escape, so its development began on the technical basis of Ford’s C2 platform. But this fact alone does not explain the enormous amount of time they managed to cut back during development.
Informal processes
The key to saving time during the development of the model is in the elimination of a large part of the formal processes that are used in the R&D center. According to these recent statements by Jim Baumbick, one of the brand’s multiple vice presidents, instead of the mandatory weekly team meetings with their superiors they made shorter and more casual contactsTherefore, the different managers were limited to approaching the work area of the engineers and designers to review the work, speak with them personally and resolve any doubts they might have, avoiding having to wait until the end of the week. to be able to raise them in a formal meeting. Although it may seem something quite trivial, this was more than enough to be able to greatly reduce the usual deadlines in which the model is developed. These practices will be carried out in the next developments of the firm.