Marchionne: Doing more with less and worker smart is the only way to survive in the auto industry

Fiat and Chrysler’s CEO Sergio Marchionne said he remains strong on the idea that the only for an automaker to make it in the 21st Century is to get bigger and work smarter with a do more with less mentality. About three years ago, Marchionne made a prediction that the global financial crisis would leave the world with six global car makers and that each would be building around 6 million vehicles a year.

“I have not changed the sense of my prediction, but more important than the absolute number of cars, is the volume produced per architecture,” Marchionne told Automotive News Europe. He predicts a minimum volume at least a million vehicles a year to achieve return, given the level of investment it takes to develop a mass platform.

“By 2014, we expect Fiat-Chrysler to reach 5.9 million units and we will have just three main architectures that drive more than 80 percent of that total volume,” he said. “I have never lived through a period with this level of complexity and this level of optionality.”

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Automotive News