TVR - a possible synopsis
Discussion
I belive from possible heresay from the TVR factory that the issue with the fish finger follows comes from the fact that it would appear due to TVR's complete lack of tracibility through their manufacturing processes they allegedly received a dodgy batch of fish finger followers that were not QC tested for metal hardness i.e. meeting the spec from the original design. One can only guess at the scenario which may have followed allong one of the following lines - the original specs sent to a sub contractor were indeed correct in the eyes of the TVR designers so the receipt of mis-specified parts in retrospect was indeed the fault of TVR and therefore couldnot be traced back to the original sub-sontractor who produced the parts. Therefore, the parts could not be returned and replaced as the fault essentially lay with TVR as they requrested fish finger follows of the incorrect specification and could not lay blame to the sub-contractor. These parts may have then been used up across 3 years of vehicles and apparently TVR have no record of which cars have been fitted with dodgy fish finger followers. This could be contrived to be a convenient way of offload a load of crap onto the consumer as if TVR have no traceability of which parts are in which car from which sub-contractor produced bacth then essentially the consumer could find it difficult to trace inappropriate parts back to TVR and to an incorrectly commission untesed bacth as TVR may currently state that they do not no which dodgy fish finger followers are in which engine. If we hark back to the fact that TVR may have only made somewhere in the region of £400K profit in their last accounting period we can easily assume that it would be uneconomical for an organisation of this size to recommission a batch of correctly specified fish finger followers as they would allegedly have to take a financial penalty in the form of paying for the correct bacth of parts and increasing production time in the form of effectively halting production and removing any allegedly dodgy fish finger follower from any currently built engines and replacing them with possibly correctly commision parts mathhcing any QA / QA testing regimes.
We can assume that a possible alternative scenario to this unfortunate financial orientated situation should it have arisen in this sequence of events could have possibly progressed in the following steps:
Fit the allegedly incorrectly specified parts into the engines knowingly hoping that over a period of time they would stand up to the a warranty period provided by the manufacturer (this is possible due to the fact most owners originally purchasing a car with a SP6 engine only use the car as a second car at the weekends and during the summer months amassing 6-8000 miles per annum). One could argue that this would happily allow the engine to function out of the warranty period as most engines appear to be 'going pop' around the 16-24000 mile area and would in most instances be applicable to those owners who had bought the car from an independant garage or privately and not necessarily from new from a dealer or directly from the factory. This may come into the context of 'bean counting' and possibly be instrinsically linked into the good will repair situation. You could argue this is a 'hedging your bets' scenario where you may quietly take the hit of rebuilds because you may have knowingly put out of specification parts into the car in first place and without adequate QA/QC traceability for each and every car (which incidently most other car manufacturers have) we may conveniently have some self justifiable situation where a consumer does not and cannot know when purchasing a vehicle that they can make an informed choice as to whether they knowingly purchase the car with inappropritely specified fitted parts to the engine which could make the engine unfit for purpose as the parts were allegedly known to be out of specification.
We can see now that goodwill has possibly become a bit too expensive but I truly belive that TVR will inevitably shoot itself in the foot this way as most of TVR business comes from repeat sales of newer specification vehicles to existing customers (you only need to walk around the different clubs up and down the UK to see the TVR owners are of a similar personality trait). I am unable to see the logic in turning away current customers by overtunrning a policy of goodwill repairs; simple cash injection to any organisatin that may be run inefficiently cannot simply act as an organisational band aid. TVR has been able to maintain all current organisaional structure, processes and operating procedures which have led to this potential open ended farce with the fish finger followers. I cannot see in the near to distant future how TVR will change as they appear to have been able to attract a cash injection without any degree of organisational change and anybody in the business world knows you simply cannot improve an organisation with failing inefficient processes by throwing money at it.
I would have to say watch this space as I have already spoken to a number of financial US colleagues and they fell about laughing when I spoke to them of TVR entering the US market - they have claimed that they will need hellish liability insurance to cover their alleged current foibles as of friends across the pond simply will not put up with bad service and will happily sue for large sums of money including loss of earnings and trauma etc etc which will amount to large amounts of cash and dealers will simplynot want to touch the cars (according to a colleague of mine in NY who sells high performance cars).
It looks from this angle that the best possible route for TVR would have a large scale business process engineering exercise rather than what looks like a cash injection band aid allowing everything to carry on as usual according to the press releases. This would have involved a potential cull of all existing middle management, complete disbandment of all existing board members, retaining all of the trade based skills in the workshops which would be streamlined; basically maintaining the knowledge without releasing the skill base.
I would still buy TVR albeit we were 4 months too late (we would still put in a bid higher than that of our Russian colleague and if he was interested in selling to make an instant profit in the space of 4 weeks we would like to talk to him about this). There are specific processes that TVR needs to progress through some of which may be difficult but in the long run and to the benefit of the organisations niche market base it would be the best rout to possibly progress down.
Best Regards
JK
We can assume that a possible alternative scenario to this unfortunate financial orientated situation should it have arisen in this sequence of events could have possibly progressed in the following steps:
Fit the allegedly incorrectly specified parts into the engines knowingly hoping that over a period of time they would stand up to the a warranty period provided by the manufacturer (this is possible due to the fact most owners originally purchasing a car with a SP6 engine only use the car as a second car at the weekends and during the summer months amassing 6-8000 miles per annum). One could argue that this would happily allow the engine to function out of the warranty period as most engines appear to be 'going pop' around the 16-24000 mile area and would in most instances be applicable to those owners who had bought the car from an independant garage or privately and not necessarily from new from a dealer or directly from the factory. This may come into the context of 'bean counting' and possibly be instrinsically linked into the good will repair situation. You could argue this is a 'hedging your bets' scenario where you may quietly take the hit of rebuilds because you may have knowingly put out of specification parts into the car in first place and without adequate QA/QC traceability for each and every car (which incidently most other car manufacturers have) we may conveniently have some self justifiable situation where a consumer does not and cannot know when purchasing a vehicle that they can make an informed choice as to whether they knowingly purchase the car with inappropritely specified fitted parts to the engine which could make the engine unfit for purpose as the parts were allegedly known to be out of specification.
We can see now that goodwill has possibly become a bit too expensive but I truly belive that TVR will inevitably shoot itself in the foot this way as most of TVR business comes from repeat sales of newer specification vehicles to existing customers (you only need to walk around the different clubs up and down the UK to see the TVR owners are of a similar personality trait). I am unable to see the logic in turning away current customers by overtunrning a policy of goodwill repairs; simple cash injection to any organisatin that may be run inefficiently cannot simply act as an organisational band aid. TVR has been able to maintain all current organisaional structure, processes and operating procedures which have led to this potential open ended farce with the fish finger followers. I cannot see in the near to distant future how TVR will change as they appear to have been able to attract a cash injection without any degree of organisational change and anybody in the business world knows you simply cannot improve an organisation with failing inefficient processes by throwing money at it.
I would have to say watch this space as I have already spoken to a number of financial US colleagues and they fell about laughing when I spoke to them of TVR entering the US market - they have claimed that they will need hellish liability insurance to cover their alleged current foibles as of friends across the pond simply will not put up with bad service and will happily sue for large sums of money including loss of earnings and trauma etc etc which will amount to large amounts of cash and dealers will simplynot want to touch the cars (according to a colleague of mine in NY who sells high performance cars).
It looks from this angle that the best possible route for TVR would have a large scale business process engineering exercise rather than what looks like a cash injection band aid allowing everything to carry on as usual according to the press releases. This would have involved a potential cull of all existing middle management, complete disbandment of all existing board members, retaining all of the trade based skills in the workshops which would be streamlined; basically maintaining the knowledge without releasing the skill base.
I would still buy TVR albeit we were 4 months too late (we would still put in a bid higher than that of our Russian colleague and if he was interested in selling to make an instant profit in the space of 4 weeks we would like to talk to him about this). There are specific processes that TVR needs to progress through some of which may be difficult but in the long run and to the benefit of the organisations niche market base it would be the best rout to possibly progress down.
Best Regards
JK
Because we have just arranged a connection with the correct investor / vc group now and are effectively 3-4 months behind schedule in that respect. We would still be interested in purchasing the organisation from the new owner for a value greater than he paid for TVR. This project is still 'on-going' and we will simply have to see what happens but I suspect looking at the new owners recent behavioural pattern in business he will get bored in 6 months and allegedly the last time this happened it was with a Russian Banking organisation which ended up with debts in the region of $2.3 billion dollars. Like most impulse purchases and looking at how quickly this sale occurred compared to e.g. the purchase of Lambo by Audi it certainly appears that this is the case.
Best Regards
JK
Best Regards
JK
I would also use more punctuation and base decision making on hard facts. Much of your argument is based upon suposition. The golden rule of business is 'Never assume'. I feel that you are reading more into the situation that is actually there, though I do agree that TVR would need to tread warily in entering the USA market as there are significant hurdles to market entry and a high cost for market exit too. If I was consulting to them, I would certainly recommend caution in approaching the USA as much of a litigious point of view than any other.
Think small, get small results. Porsche and Ferrari did make it work in the USA--beofe Ferrari was bought by Fiat.
I agree the faults need to be fixed, but having said that, don't the UK customers want a quality product for the amount they spend? For 40-70,000 pounds, I would think you would expect the engine to last at least 60,000 miles. Don't you think that if the quality had improved the UK sales would have increased? IF the quality is there, why not sell EVERYWHERE?
I agree the faults need to be fixed, but having said that, don't the UK customers want a quality product for the amount they spend? For 40-70,000 pounds, I would think you would expect the engine to last at least 60,000 miles. Don't you think that if the quality had improved the UK sales would have increased? IF the quality is there, why not sell EVERYWHERE?
Because the 'quality' is no there; I was led to believe that Jason Oxley's father has just taken up the responsibility according to one of the dealers I spoke to (this was prior to the take over). This belies the idea was there any QA / QC function within TVR's organisation before this point? We can only guess but I find it very unlikely that TVR can produce an audit trail for every car from leaving the factory back to the car's component parts and back again to suppliers via internal and external auditing (see ISO/TS1649 for guidelines on how to run a 'quality' automotive production plant).
jkyle69 said:
Because the 'quality' is no there; I was led to believe that Jason Oxley's father has just taken up the responsibility according to one of the dealers I spoke to (this was prior to the take over). This belies the idea was there any QA / QC function within TVR's organisation before this point? We can only guess but I find it very unlikely that TVR can produce an audit trail for every car from leaving the factory back to the car's component parts and back again to suppliers via internal and external auditing (see ISO/TS1649 for guidelines on how to run a 'quality' automotive production plant).
Some of my clients are or were suppliers to TVR. I have heard some shocking stories about component quality, which I always felt obliged to keep quiet about whilst PW still ran the show (not client confidentiality, oddly enough). One of the suppliers in question was also a supplier to Rolls-Royce, and they resorted to welding up castings and remachining them. If they did it for RR I don't see why they wouldn't have done it for TVR... and I bet there was no paper trail, as you say.
One of my other clients was a casting plant making blocks and heads for the likes of Vauxhall: after discoverng they had major casting flaws due to poor die design, instead of changing the dies, they employed two men with an ultrasonic set to test each part whilst it was still hot from the die. If it failed, it went back in the melting pot.... a cost-cutting exercise by the accountants, rather than a proper solution by the engineers... so don't think quality issues only affect the small boys.
Ian
Apparently TVR only do spot tests on components coming into the factory claiming they do not have the infrastructure to test every single parts due to the number of parts coming into the factory. This is an interesting statement when TVR produced only 1000 cars in a year this does not come up to a large batch of anything in the automotive world. You could argue that they simply could not be bothered as no one will complain and everyone will put up with it. They should take a long hard look at Lambo for this one, nice cars but there market just simply could not be bothered buying a car with crap build quality. In the current fickle market place it will take very little for TVR to lose their current customer base which it would appear seems to be held together loosely by good will repair offers.
During a factory tour a few years ao I enquired of our guide whether any non-destructive testing (eg x-ray, ultrasonics) was performed on the chassis welding.
His eyes shifted around a bit and then he said "Er...yeah.... I think they do ultrasonics on 'em...."
Hardly likely; you'd never get a typical UT probe into a tube joint. UT is only practical on, say, a large diameter pipe butt weld....
and we know TVR have no radiography facility.... 
So: who checks the weld quality? Or the welder quality come to that...?
Finally, I can also (sort of) blow the whistle on my factory source: a long-serving member of staff has a holiday home next door to that of my parents, so he and my dad are drinking pals. On occasion when I have been visiting them, 'Mr. X.' has shared the odd tale with us. It was he who told me that the Malaysian operation had gone tits-up and litigation is in the pipeline over there (I presume).... and also that the Chimaera shells were so badly built that the lads at Blackpool spent hellish amounts of time putting things right. In the recent 'car park loony' incident at the Wedge Fest, the Chimaera that was involved did indeed seem to have some dire lamination issues... plenty of mat, where's the resin?
One more reason to buy a Griffith, IMHO
Ian
His eyes shifted around a bit and then he said "Er...yeah.... I think they do ultrasonics on 'em...."
Hardly likely; you'd never get a typical UT probe into a tube joint. UT is only practical on, say, a large diameter pipe butt weld....
and we know TVR have no radiography facility.... So: who checks the weld quality? Or the welder quality come to that...?
Finally, I can also (sort of) blow the whistle on my factory source: a long-serving member of staff has a holiday home next door to that of my parents, so he and my dad are drinking pals. On occasion when I have been visiting them, 'Mr. X.' has shared the odd tale with us. It was he who told me that the Malaysian operation had gone tits-up and litigation is in the pipeline over there (I presume).... and also that the Chimaera shells were so badly built that the lads at Blackpool spent hellish amounts of time putting things right. In the recent 'car park loony' incident at the Wedge Fest, the Chimaera that was involved did indeed seem to have some dire lamination issues... plenty of mat, where's the resin?
One more reason to buy a Griffith, IMHO
Ian
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