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Looks like new Ford CEO Alan Mulally has made his first executive level move at Ford. With a penchant for finding operational inefficiencies and with the job of cutting fat off a laggard automaker, Mulally has tapped Derrick Kuzak to run product development for the entire company instead of just the U.S. Hey, that's 'going global' in a sense, yes?

As industries have changed from segmented, hierarchical silos that have disconnected strategies on global product development and marketing, Mulally apparently wants to get Ford in league with other companies who have a cohesive global strategy and the savings that come along with that. Mulally said, "An integrated, global product development team supporting our automotive business units will enable us to make the best use of our global assets and capabilities and accelerate development of the new vehicles our customers prefer, and do so more efficiently."

It was no surprise that Mulally is making changes this early, as he indicated in an interview with Forbes recently that the company had too many teams working on similar products. This means that Mulally is a change agent for the better, something Ford needs as its costs spiral out of control. In what I consider an ultimate statement of why Ford needed to relearn the cost sensitivity of its customers, Mulally said "Ford has grown up as very independent, different Fords ... different teams do each car, so they are different. And a lot of that complexity customers don't want to pay for."

Roger that, Alan.

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