General Motors

The company has a strong commitment to developing new technologies in-house and to being the best.

As the company is such a large organization, project planning and coordination is not as effective as it could be. Paperwork and 'IT systems' are used as a substitute for proper planning. This prevents the engineers from spending their time on real engineering; instead, huge amounts of repetitive, unnecessary paperwork are created.

For vehicle software development cycles, lengthen the development period. This will give the development community time to get things right the first time, and overall in a shorter time.

Remove the 'not invented here' mentality from all back-office organizations for engineering tools and processes. Too many of the tools GM uses for day-to-day work are customized "GM-made" tools that have cheaper, better alternatives in the marketplace. This allows better cooperation with suppliers and less ramp-up time for new engineers to the "GM way".