[Team] Williams: Do they have a spare tub?

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by P38 in workshop

Which illustrates quite nicely what happens when the designers haven't had the chance to learn about production efficiency while working for the likes of Ralt or Reynard.The discipline of achieving a good outcome while not making the process complicated and expensive hasn't been driven into those who entered the business during the unlimited spending era.

Maybe, but this is Formula One not Indycar or Formula 3000 or Formula 3. Win at any cost, no $135m p/a, is the mantra!

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.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by V8 Fireworks

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.

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.

[TrapezeArtist]

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”.

[Skam85]

Originally Posted by Vassago

Albon is another of long line of drivers who looks good/above average in mid-tier car but is absolutely not good enough to win in a top car.


I still remember the moaning about Fisichella deserving a top car and then he got knocked out by Alonso when he finally got a chance.


Albon will carve himself a career as solid driver for midpack teams but you can forget about him challenging for Top 5s let alone podiums in normal circumstances.

100% agree with this.

[Skam85]

Originally Posted by TrapezeArtist

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”.

All true, he speaks well and seems to be trying to put the right foundations in now to build a serious team, however his honest, real, speak will only last so long. The proof of the pudding will be in the cooking.

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.

[Moneyseeker]

Originally Posted by Skam85

All true, he speaks well and seems to be trying to put the right foundations in now to build a serious team, however his honest, real, speak will only last so long. The proof of the pudding will be in the cooking.



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.

Yep, a pattern from Williams is that they are always preparing for 'next year'.

Sent from my SM-T736B using Tapatalk

[peebee2]

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.

[Greem]

Originally Posted by Moneyseeker

Yep, a pattern from Williams is that they are always preparing for 'next year'.

3 races in and the beatings have started already!

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.

[Greem]

Originally Posted by peebee2

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.

I wonder what the link could possibly be? Strategy? Tyres? Fuel?

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.

[BertMk2]

Originally Posted by Skam85

All true, he speaks well and seems to be trying to put the right foundations in now to build a serious team,

He does seem to be pretty straightforward in his explanations - also seems on the face of it to be a good man manager. He comes across as someone you'd like to work with.

Originally Posted by Skam85

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.

I think he was surprised just how bad a state the team was in - they've had to change a lot behind the scenes in a short space of time to try and make up for the lack of investment under the previous regimes. Those changes resulted in things for this season being delayed further and the spare tub was sacrificed for day to day parts. It's clearly a big job to try and turn things around and won't be done in the short term. I think if Williams aren't dead last this season then that will be a good result for them.

[Moneyseeker]

Originally Posted by Greem

3 races in and the beatings have started already!

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.

Yes, but bringing people in from vastly financed manufacturer teams doesn't always provide the leap forward you might expect. Clever thinking can only do so much, you need the resources and ability to afford the financial risk that fast paced development brings.

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...

[peebee2]

Originally Posted by Greem

3 races in and the beatings have started already!

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.

F1 is absolutely chock-a-block full of immensely clever people who are totally ineffective though through lack of practical common sense.

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Every broom is repairable if you change out the head and handle.

Grandad’s axe…

More interestingly… does Mr Sargeant get his not-crashed chassis back for Japan?

[P38 in workshop]

Originally Posted by Greem

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.

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.

[Sodemo]

Are there any performance parameters to indicate if the 2024 car is quicker than the 2023 car?

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Skam85

All true, he speaks well and seems to be trying to put the right foundations in now to build a serious team, however his honest, real, speak will only last so long. The proof of the pudding will be in the cooking.

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.

I agree with this. He's been in charge for over a year now. Whilst I don't expect them to rocket up the grid in a year, I do expect them to have the spare parts required to operate a 2 car race team effectively.

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.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

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.

Serious question... Did he say they moved from Excel to Access? I sure hope not. 1995 wants it's technology back. And I will agree. It is 100% a joke to use Excel like this in an organization of their size. Can you make Excel work? Absolutely. With enough effort you could make clay tablets work. But any efficiencies are out the door!

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

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Richard C

Serious question... Did he say they moved from Excel to Access? I sure hope not. 1995 wants it's technology back. And I will agree. It is 100% a joke to use Excel like this in an organization of their size. Can you make Excel work? Absolutely. With enough effort you could make clay tablets work. But any efficiencies are out the door!

No, the Access comment is humour. They have now got a bespoke system.

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

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

No, the Access comment is humour. They have now got a bespoke system.

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

Cool. I think we are in violent agreement here!

Richard

[chillibowl]

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?

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

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?

My opinion is that the cost caps (and documentation) probably care about a specific level of aggregation of details. Such as... tell me who your staff is, how much you pay them, what and from where you purchased your raw materials, etc. I think the manufacturing and inventory tracking will provide a deeper level of understanding and tracking that is beyond those required by cost caps requirements???

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.

Originally Posted by chillibowl

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?

It cost money to save money. I don't know what the situation is inside Williams, but I can easily imagine a situation many years ago when there were discussion such as "We can spend $X on better manufacturing automation software or we can use that same money on the car". A struggling team that is not well funded is much more likely to defer "infrastructure" expenses like that. But it becomes an insidious negative spiral the more you push off those types of things that help operational efficiency and/or long term health. Buy bread and milk, but not vitamins. When under pressure solutions like that feel optional and/or providing hypothetical future benefits when the issues are "now".

Originally Posted by chillibowl

i guess nothing surprises anymore.

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.

Originally Posted by chillibowl

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?

This so far is a one off for the team. If this continues as a pattern then I think alarm bells will start going off as you say.

Richard

[chillibowl]

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'.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

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'.

Maybe bad phrasing on my part. What I mean is... this has happened once this season. If it happens again then more people will talk.

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

[Skam85]

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.

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by Skam85

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.

Brawn was run with a group with all these systems in place from the Tyrrell/BAR/Honda days... and had a fair clip of budget to keep the thing alive from Honda not wanting to shut the place. That said, there were only 2 Brawn tubs werent there?

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...