2006 Interview with Gary Flint - Page 3
ROC: What thought went into deciding the Ridgeline's final configuration? To elaborate, to what degree did cost factors, market research, designer input, etc. participate in deciding what to include in the Ridgeline?
Gary Flint: Honda’s internal culture fosters input on the product design from many different sources: Focus group input, current customers, potential future customers, Honda employees that owned trucks, Honda motor cycle and power equipment owners, our own engineers, the Ridgeline design team, dealers, executives; and of course finally myself, which tries to organize and make sense of all the input and direct the design.
During the course of this development process, we conducted over 12 major focus groups talking to approximately 1100 different truck customers and truck intenders. We also conducted several towing surveys that were distributed nation-wide to over 40,000 truck customers. We covered as many parts of the country as time and budget would permit. From this input, we had a pretty deep understanding of how the typical truck customer uses their vehicle, what they need to haul, off-road use, and towing needs. We used this basic information to begin packaging the vehicle to meet these needs. From all the input we gathered, we developed “limit modules” (maximum size items) that needed to be carried in the various cargo modes, maximum payload for truck vocation, and finally the towing specification. The vehicle was packaged around humans first, and then cargo. This initial packaging and investigation work was done with a core group of engineers that followed the process through to production.
One of our first basic hurdles we faced was determining the physical size of the vehicle. There was a lot internal discussion regarding creating such a large vehicle (the largest thus far in the Honda family). We put together a very strong and convincing story very early in the process that explained the rationale for the overall size and package. This required significant support and development from our manufacturing team in Alliston, Canada. To answer your specific question, we made a list of must and want items and prioritized implementation of those issues based on the business case. To this end, one of the questions posed by one of the owners in this group is why we didn’t consider a vertical roll down window (similar to the Toyota Tundra). We actually built running prototypes with this type of window which in some ways would have been less challenging to develop. We diverted away from this design early in the process in order to maximize the rear seat space and bed length which would have been compromised with the vertical roll-down design.
One of the other frequent questions posed on this site, is what we internally refer to “pre-sets” for the accessories provided by our Honda family company that is responsible for developing Honda accessories: Honda Access of America. Although Honda R&D Americas Inc. does not engineer these components, we work closely with American Honda and Honda Access of America to incorporate the mounting hardware into the vehicle side of the process. Many factors affect this decision; we try to achieve a balance between the cost to provide the wiring or mounting hardware on the vehicle (that every customer pays for) versus the penetration rate of the accessory. It does not make sense to penalize every customer with the cost on an expensive piece of hardware they do not plan on using. Another aspect of this is also the installation labor. Again, that is factored into the cost analysis to reach an appropriate break-even point.
We spent a great deal of time and resources providing the necessary hardware to make the vehicle ready for towing. There is significant cost in the vehicle for the transmission cooler, power steering cooler, and believe it or not – the wiring for the hitch that runs the complete length of the vehicle. One of the biggest cost aspects of the wiring is the water-proof connector for the hitch. This is again an extremely expensive component.
The high penetration truck accessories are what I spent my energy and resources on. The remaining accessory issues that were common across other Honda family vehicles did not draw as much of my energy personally. We of course will continually monitor the installation and sales rates of accessories and make adjustments on future models if there is significant market demand.
