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24 Mar 2024, 13:27 (Ref:4202535) | #2151 | ||
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Being cost efficient is for lower categories, in Formula One performance is king. Williams old style of chassis or Williams aluminium gearbox may have been more cost efficient, but presumably they were inferior in terms of performance to designs found higher up the grid. E.g., Williams aluminium gearbox casing was heavier than rival's carbon-fibre casing. |
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24 Mar 2024, 13:41 (Ref:4202538) | #2152 | |||
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This may well be the case; however, were the Williams cars, with that heavier gearbox, overall heavier than the other cars on the grid or did they just meet the FIA's minimum weight criteria? I don't know. |
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24 Mar 2024, 22:37 (Ref:4202627) | #2153 | ||
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What a breath of fresh air the C4 interview with James Vowles was! Real information, he answered the questions he was asked, admitted their problems and no PR-speak. A million times better than the “Christian Horner Show”.
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24 Mar 2024, 23:34 (Ref:4202632) | #2154 | |||
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24 Mar 2024, 23:38 (Ref:4202633) | #2155 | |||
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And so far, apart from having a zoomy car in a straight line and one fairly decent driver, not much has changed at Williams. Their car was late (again), they don't have a spare tub (embarrassing). If this was the Clare Williams/Kubica/Sirotkin era there would be a lot more criticism. |
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25 Mar 2024, 07:20 (Ref:4202651) | #2156 | ||
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Sent from my SM-T736B using Tapatalk |
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25 Mar 2024, 08:57 (Ref:4202652) | #2157 | |
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Always thought it strange to appoint from Merc - a team who’ve enjoyed an unlimited budget and totally dominated from a massive engine advantage alone.
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25 Mar 2024, 09:29 (Ref:4202658) | #2158 | ||
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Vowles is an immensely clever man, but even geniuses need time to do their work. If Williams are still in the doldrums in a couple of years (and that's a 50/50 chance right now) then I think we can be rightly critical, but for now he's trying to undo decades of "plucky underdog" practices. That's not the work of 5 minutes. |
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25 Mar 2024, 09:34 (Ref:4202660) | #2159 | ||
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Couldn't be engines, could it? As an aside - could this actually be Mercedes setting up a similar satellite operation to RBR in the long term? Dorilton will want out at some point. |
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25 Mar 2024, 09:36 (Ref:4202661) | #2160 | ||||
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25 Mar 2024, 09:38 (Ref:4202663) | #2161 | ||
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People used to almost unlimited resources (despite the budget cap) don't always adapt or find they can't influence the step change as they imagined they could. Exhibit A: Paddy Lowe... |
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25 Mar 2024, 10:06 (Ref:4202669) | #2162 | ||
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Last edited by peebee2; 25 Mar 2024 at 10:14. |
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25 Mar 2024, 11:42 (Ref:4202684) | #2163 | ||
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25 Mar 2024, 12:41 (Ref:4202695) | #2164 | ||
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I think Dorilton will be keeping a close eye on the value of their asset and only when the time is right to see a good return would I expect to see them depart.With recent statements to the effect that every team has to be worth a billion,they may be nicely situated already. |
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25 Mar 2024, 13:55 (Ref:4202706) | #2165 | ||
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Are there any performance parameters to indicate if the 2024 car is quicker than the 2023 car?
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25 Mar 2024, 14:00 (Ref:4202709) | #2166 | ||
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His recent comments about how the team managed inventory is also rather odd. He said it was "a joke" that they used Microsoft Excel for inventory management. This all sounded a bit odd really, as Excel is more than capable of this if you have robust systems and processes surrounding it. Then it turns out he was the one that changed how parts were classified and logged, which meant the current Excel sheets they had no longer worked, as the parts list increased 10,000x. Williams discovering Microsoft Access is not going to magically fix the problem of processes, which is what it appears to be. I like Vowles. He speaks well and seems good. But the last couple of weeks have been showing there may be more to this picture. |
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25 Mar 2024, 15:24 (Ref:4202726) | #2167 | ||
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My take is... (I haven't seen the C4 interview, just the comments posted in other articles and his own YT video that IIRC goes over the inventory and production management process). They decided to move two a new system and do it "big bang" style between seasons. This was disruptive (as expected), but probably more disruptive than they expected. As to Vowles, time will tell. I think you need to operate efficiently to be successful. But that is not the only aspect of success. The operational efficiency is just removing organization drag. The org still has to get the job done. In short, it is positioning them for success. But a new manufacturing and inventory tooling system is not going to make the car faster by itself. Richard |
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25 Mar 2024, 15:57 (Ref:4202733) | #2168 | ||
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However, the reality is much of the data they needed simply wasn't in the sheet. They were not tracking costs, stock levels or production times. It is not the systems fault if you don't track these. Similarly the warehouse had no proper stock procedure, which meant stuff would go missing. Regardless of what system you use, if you don't bother with this then it's not going to work |
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25 Mar 2024, 16:52 (Ref:4202737) | #2169 | ||
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Richard |
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25 Mar 2024, 16:54 (Ref:4202738) | #2170 | ||
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in relation to not tracking costs...surely that raises questions about how they were monitoring their own spending and then of course how effective was any budget analysis carried out by the FIA for cap purposes?
in a way, if they were always so short on money over the years, one would think that they should have gotten really good at counting every penny and spare parts otherwise they would have gone bust years ago? i guess nothing surprises anymore. not even seeing any stories about sponsors relations or talk about losing sponsors because they failed to field two cars...that in and of itself is weird no? its like they dont really care about money? |
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25 Mar 2024, 17:54 (Ref:4202747) | #2171 | ||||
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This reminds me a bit of IT companies and moving to using cloud resources. So at the end of the month, you will get a bill from your cloud provider (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.) and you will for sure know how much you are spending in total. But you might not be able to know how to map spending to specific projects or product lines. But you can track those specifics, but it is up to you to do that if you want that level of detail. So some companies might work on an aggregate level (our cloud costs are $X per month) while others have better insight including places where waste and inefficiencies exist (our clouds costs are $X and $Y of that is wasteful spending that we need to eliminate) Same would probably apply to F1 cars. So lets say a team needs to make a component (lets say a bell crank arm for front suspension). How many do we need? How many have we made in the past and how frequently were they consumed over the season? Do these age out by use? For those in manufacturing what raw material is required? Do we have the material? For those being produced do they have individual tracking number? What are those numbers? Where are they in the manufacturing process? Where are the individual components right this moment? Where are those today? One way is to just say "we used 12 last year, build 12 this year" and hope they are available when you need them and that you are either not short or making significantly more than you need. Or you have a process that provides more empirical data in your decision making. Quote:
Spend any time in a struggling company and nothing will surprise! And I am alluding (and speculating) toward the period prior to the family selling the team. Quote:
Richard |
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25 Mar 2024, 18:38 (Ref:4202757) | #2172 | ||
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for sure i get your point and while i absolutely sympathise with their situation and am hopeful they turn it around, im not sure you can call something that has been such a long time in developing as a 'one off'.
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25 Mar 2024, 18:48 (Ref:4202758) | #2173 | ||
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Scenario 1. They don't have any other issues that exposes a lack of spares. They win in that situation Scenario 2. They have another issue (lets say they damage another tub in practice at Japan and again don't have spare) and it exposes the issue with lack of spares. They lose in that situation. The key is them working ASAP to getting their backlog of spares cleared and some luck of not needing spares they don't have. Richard |
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25 Mar 2024, 21:47 (Ref:4202774) | #2174 | ||
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Brawn managed just fine in 2009 with little to no spares.. in a non cost-cap era.
The key there may be in the name, and two far superior drivers I suppose. |
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26 Mar 2024, 00:47 (Ref:4202789) | #2175 | |||
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Williams clearly found the coin to express airfreight the broken chassis tub back to Europe for repair, and to eventually send on to Japan... Perhaps there is a timing issue of the software introduction, to replace Excel. Presumably its now multi user (which Excel can kinda handle but there are fleas...) and able to take on more and more detail and pukka batch recording and control. It could have been done to control parts on the '23 car.. maybe they figured it was a lot of work to do so for parts the team will never have use for again... Wonder if it put anyone out of a gig to modernise this way. I somehow imagine a data entry operator keying into the Excel model from hell... |
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