He entered the chairman's office at General Motors at the start of a difficult decade, and by the second year of his tenure he had forged his die to recast the world's largest industrial company.
The mold included plant closings and slashes in white-collar staffing, billions of dollars for modernization and vows to compete on a world scale. The blueprint was a bold corporate reorganization, an effort to dismantle empires and fiefdoms dating back to the days of Alfred P. Sloan, father of the modern GM.
That was Roger Smith's vision of the early 1980s. Mr. Smith became GM's chief executive in January 1981 and retired in 1990.
His successor, GM Chairman Robert C. Stempel, scrapped Mr. Smith's plan with a sweeping announcement that sounded suspiciously familiar.
Deja vu, or the remedy for a desperately sick institution?
Mr. Stempel's long-term prescription is being overwhelmed by current events: a deep recession that has forced the closings of a score of manufacturing plants and layoffs of thousands of workers. But industry analysts say he has confronted GM's fundamental problem -- its inability to consistently produce cost-competitive cars and trucks.
As part of his restructuring plan, Mr. Stempel decided to keep GM's assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, and close its sister Willow Run plant near Ypsilanti, Mich.
"Before Dec. 18 [the day Mr. Stempel announced GM's coming restructuring], I didn't think Bob Stempel had his attention focused" on costs, said Maryann Keller, automotive analyst for Furman Selz investment bankers in New York City. "But a loss of $7 billion in North America will tend to sharpen your focus."
GM reported a net loss of $4.45 billion for 1991, but the picture was much worse for its North American auto operations. The loss would have been even bigger if earnings at other GM subsidiaries -- Electronic Data Systems, General Motors Acceptance Corp., GM Hughes Electronics and GM's international operations -- had not totaled $4.6 billion.
GM North America -- U.S. and Canadian auto building -- posted an operating loss of close to $7 billion, plus another $1.8 billion write-off to cover the cost of closing 21 manufacturing plants by 1995.
In other words, GM North America lost money last year building cars at the rate of $250,000 in the 15 minutes you might spend reading this article. In the hour you might spend with a Sunday newspaper, the company would have lost $1 million.
"That's $1 million an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Somebody's got to address that," said Jim Harbour of Harbour & Associates, a Troy, Mich., manufacturing consultant who spent 30 years working for Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. "He finally stood up in front of the world. . . . I saw who is the leader of that corporation. I think he has charged that corporation and all its executives: Perform or get out.
"If he doesn't do it, there's no GM," Mr. Harbour said.
Industry observers and management consultants give Mr. Stempel generally high marks in performing his No. 1 job as GM's chief executive officer: defining the company and organizing it to best do its job.
Mr. Stempel proposed these major elements:
* Replace GM's three principal auto groups -- Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac (BOC), Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada (CPC), and Truck & Bus -- with groups based on function 'D --platforms (auto chassis and body); power trains (engine and transmission); components; and marketing. A North American Strategy Board will guide the transition.
* Consolidate GM's five technical staffs into three and shift parts of the massive corporate staff into North American Operations.
* Cut employment by 74,000, including 54,000 hourly jobs and 20,000 salaried jobs. This will lower GM's North American work force by 17 percent to about 350,000.
* Close 21 manufacturing plants. GM aims to buy components it can't make efficiently, and increase use of manufacturing capacity.
"If you look at . . . Europe, one of the things we've done over there is use the fixed facility 24 hours a day. Obviously, it's the way we are going to have to go," Mr. Stempel said.
He said, the company decided to try to sell a parts plant in Danville, Ind.
"Those things today . . . are such that we can't be competitive, and we think someone who might have a different foundry and [could] consolidate operations has a better chance at doing that," Mr. Stempel said.
Although the layoffs and plant closings garner attention, they're symptoms of GM's illness, not its cure, Ms. Keller said.
"Closing a factory is not the focus of what you do. Closing a factory is what the customer does to you," she said. "Has one of Arlington's cars become more beautiful, more desirable? No."
Thomas O'Grady, president of Integrated Automobile Resources in Wayne, Pa., said he approves of Mr. Stempel's plan to dismantle BOC and CPC.
"The most important thing is focusing on the platform groups, provided they really do have autonomy," Mr. O'Grady said.
Mr. Smith installed BOC and CPC to break what he perceived as the undue independence of Fisher Body, which had a reputation for designing car bodies without enough input from GM Assembly Division.
Mr. Smith's goal was good, analysts said, but he never achieved it.
"Instead of making it more flexible, it set up a new bureaucracy," said Kim Cameron, professor of organizational behavior at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
"When they eliminated Fisher Body, they really broke it up and gave half to BOC and half to CPC," Mr. O'Grady said. "Then both divisions re-created it."
GM remains a laggard when it comes to executing designers' blueprints.
In 1990 Mr. Harbour surveyed 37 North American auto assembly plants. He found that Ford's Atlanta factory, which builds the Taurus, ranked No. 1.
Atlanta could build the midsize family car in 21.8 hours, among the world's best. GM plants building the similar-size Chevrolet .. Corsica/Beretta took 31 hours.
And the reason is not slower workers. It's what the workers build.
Ms. Keller said a Taurus bumper has about 35 pieces. A Chevy Lumina bumper has 115 pieces.
"The secret of cost-competitiveness is not in the factory. It is in the design," said Ms. Keller, who critiqued GM in the book "Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors."
Others agreed.
"They've experimented with nearly every approach available with automobile assembly operation," said Richard Florida, associate professor of management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "When I look at GM, I look at a portfolio of plant types that, unfortunately, has not returned to their bottom line."
Differences in worker-management organization can be dramatic.
Mr. Cameron said GM on average has five to six employees reporting to each manager. Honda, he said, averages 42. There can be 17 levels of union job classifications, he said, or there can be two: team leader and team member, as at NUMMI.
"Seventy-five percent of what NUMMI is doing should be disseminated throughout the corporation," he said. "Probably 10 percent is."
Saturn likewise provides a model. Although Saturn is losing money as production lags behind schedule, its small cars are drawing rave reviews from customers and auto reviewers.
Whichever model or combination of models Mr. Stempel chooses, most analysts expect him to succeed in rallying GM behind his vision of a leaner company.
"He happens to be a likable person. You want him to succeed; he wants you to succeed," said Ms. Keller.
She expects Mr. Stempel to come up with a manufacturing technique that will mix technology with effective worker organization.