Making leaps in quality
When Louise Goeser needs a little extra horsepower, she heads for the stable. Equestrian jumping is the latest pursuit of the president and chief executive of Ford Motor Co.’s Mexico division.
The automaker’s insurers would probably prefer it if the 54-year-old just bought a Mustang. But Goeser (pronounced GAY-zer) loves the challenge of guiding a horse over 1.4-meter-high fences.
“I know it’s sort of crazy,” says Goeser, who took up the sport after assuming her post in Mexico in 2005. “Now, it’s like my passion.”
Taking a leap is nothing new for Goeser, who left a 20-year career with Westinghouse Electric Corp. to pursue a path that has led her to the highest job in one of Ford’s most important foreign markets. A math wonk rather than a gear head, Goeser has shifted easily into the automotive industry thanks to her expertise in teaching companies how to boost their quality.
Thus it’s no accident that Ford’s Mexican assembly plants are among the company’s top performers in terms of productivity, fewest defects and cost competitiveness. The automaker produces its popular F-Series trucks here to supply the Mexican market, as well as the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKZ sedans for export.
It’s not just the plants that are winning accolades. Mexico’s Expansion magazine this year named the automaker one of the best places to work in Mexico. Employees surveyed said they liked the pay, benefits and room to advance. But little things have also boosted morale, such as the heart-healthy food in the cafeteria at corporate headquarters.
For Goeser, it’s affirmation that attention to detail pays off. A former general manager of refrigeration products for Whirlpool Corp., she used to chat with customers in appliance stores to see what they were buying and why. When the company’s design engineers told her that exposed screws on the doors of some models were functional, she told them to scrap them anyway.
“I said, ‘They may be practical, but they’re ugly,’ ” Goeser says. Her team turned the money-losing unit around by slashing models, streamlining factories and rolling out good-looking refrigerators “that you would want to have in your home.”
Getting more Fords into garages in Mexico is now the challenge for Goeser, who finds herself operating in one of the most cutthroat car cultures on the planet.
Just over 1.1 million new cars and trucks were sold in Mexico last year, making it the world’s 14th-largest market. That’s a far cry from the 16.7 million purchased in the U.S. But some analysts calculate that Mexico will surpass Canada, the No. 11 vehicle market, by the end of the decade. Mexico’s population is young and eager to get a set of wheels. More than 50 brands and nearly 300 models are fighting for consumers’ attention.
“Winning in this market is like winning the World Cup because you’re in the most competitive international market in the world,” Goeser says. “You have to do it by doing everything right.”
About 1 in 6 new vehicles sold in Mexico last year was a Ford, putting the company No. 3 in sales, behind General Motors Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. But the company has hit a speed bump this year. Though Mexico’s overall vehicle sales are off 2.4% through October because of a slowing economy, Ford’s Mexico sales are down 15% compared with the same period last year.
Goeser blames it on Brazil. Some of the most popular cars that Ford sells in Mexico are the compact Fiesta and Ka, both of which are manufactured in Brazil. That country’s car market is so hot and its currency is so strong that Goeser says it’s simply more profitable for the company to sell the cars locally than to export them to Mexico. Lower inventory has translated into lower sales in Mexico.
“The Brazil market has just exploded,” she says. “We are capacity-constrained.”
Goeser, who grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, showed an early aptitude for math. When she was in high school, the National Science Foundation plucked her for a summer program devoted to theoretical mathematics.
Childhood friend Ellen Hemmerly remembers that even as a kid, Goeser had a way of homing in on problems and figuring out what was really relevant, be they on exams or in real life.
“Louise was very quick,” says Hemmerly, now executive director of the University of Maryland Baltimore County Research Park. “She could reduce a situation to its very bare components very quickly.”
Goeser graduated at the top of her class at Penn State, and Westinghouse came calling.
She spent two decades there in a variety of leadership positions, including a stint at the company’s Productivity and Quality Center. That group’s job is to help develop rigorous processes to get things right the first time. That eliminates waste, boosts profits and wins customer loyalty.
Her work there caught the eye of Whirlpool, which hired her in 1994 to implement so-called Six Sigma practices to eliminate defects. Ford wooed her away in 1999 to help them do the same thing for sedans and SUVs that she did with side-by-side refrigerators.
Goeser’s influence can be seen in a recent J.D. Power & Associates report. Ford dominated the Initial Quality Survey released by the Westlake Village market research firm in June. Fourteen of Ford’s models placed in the top three of their market segments, more than any other company, including the vaunted Japanese automakers. Two Mexican-made products, the Mercury Milan and the Lincoln MKZ, ranked No. 1 in their respective classes.
Goeser says quality was all about “the will and the skill,” the former being perhaps the most important.
“The only way you continue to improve quality is if everyone in the company is engaged,” Goeser says.
--
--
Begin text of infobox
High standards
Who: Louise Goeser
Title: President and chief executive, Ford of Mexico, since 2005
Unofficial title: Queen of Quality; she has directed quality initiatives at Ford and two other major American companies.
Born: Chicago; grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Age: 54
Experience: Joined Ford in 1999 as vice president, quality; before that spent five years with Whirlpool Corp. and 20 years with Westinghouse Electric Corp.
Education: Bachelor’s in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University; MBA from the University of Pittsburgh
Hobby: Horseback riding and jumping
Family: Husband, four daughters, five grandchildren
First car: 1971 Ford LTD
What she’s driving now: 2007 Lincoln Navigator
