Originally posted by aflo: The Detroit News article is very informative. I must copy Bruce Campbells's picture and deface it (black out a tooth - or a mustache?) to send to him however. SE, I checked out and enjoyed your website. I think we met in San Diego (and at Art Center). I remember liking your work.
Hi Al,
Yeah, I met briefly with you guys way back in '00 after I graduated from Art Center, and also bumped into you probably a few years later when the NDA staff visited the campus.
Bruce looks like he's still sporting his ponytail in the press image.
My website is long overdue for an update. I'm hoping to get it finished by the end of this weekend - stay tuned.
SE, I will check out your site again soon to see what you have done with it.
O&T, 'The Raft of the Medusa'??? I had to google it and wow, you are right on! Hilarious. But very sad.
On the shorter time frame for projects, there is no reason this can't work IF managed well. Of course it won't be. The problem is that there is so much wasted motion at a studio like that - too many proposals prepared, often too many people working on the project for anyone to feel like they actually have real responsibility, and too many delays due to schedule glitches. The later usually occur because the Japanese (or Detroit) engineering team isn't ready to release proper guidelines, or to review the too-many proposals for engineering feasibility so the studio can make corrections, or at least select from feasible designs rather than cheated ones. The best way (probably the ONLY way) to handle these issues is to have a strong on-site engineering team to help the designers stay real and to make sure that the information goes back and forth from the studio guys to the main (off-site) engineering team. So what did they do? They laid off the three studio engineers first thing... DUH
lol they cleaned house to get cheaper designers...9or better younger ones)
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. " Vexed & Glorious as ever _________________________ ---------GRAFFITITECH---------
It's the end of the month. My heart goes out to you gals and guys. Hey, is the art center going to hold a get-together for you guys, you know, to show their support?
I can shed some more light on the NDA-SD situation.
To confirm, the entire studio engineering staff was eliminated. The reason being that the digital modeling team can do that work in the future as well as their current work load, thus there was no need for the engineers. The digital modeleing team will need to interface with Japanese, Mexican and Detroit based engineering staffs in the future. They now have the receptionist coordinating the engineering from Japan!
The milling operations and model scanning are planned to be outsourced to Mexico and local SoCal vendors in the interest of budget savings. That means three more NDA-SD personel will be let go. Security and confidentiality at the border crossings and at the milling vendors in Mexico has not been carefully examined. Border crossings typically take 2-3 hours in both directions.
The fabrication shop personel will be eliminated. That means two more people will be let go. Shop responsibilities will now be carried out my the clay modeling staff.
The Color and Trim manager was demoted in what some speculate is a plan to elimate the remaining members of the group. If that happens, then three more personel will be let go.
Finally, last Friday the 29th was the deadline to accept a voluntary resignation offer. Six people in San Diego accepted. More were anticipated by the senior management, so more involuntary cuts in the near future are assured.
NDA-SD lost some of their best talent in the month of February in a shotgun method of dismisals and required unreasonable personal performance objectives placed on a select few of the higher paid employees in what many feel was a dirty way to reduce the overall employee compensation. The question remains why are there still most of the redundant higher paid senior management staff remaining? Lots of big chiefs and a few low paid indians makes a great business plan!
