Job cuts in DaimlerChrysler’s R&D organisation will be below the average for the company as a whole, according to Thomas Weber, head of group R&D, speaking in an interview with Reuters.
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DaimlerChrysler is centralising R&D and merging it with product development to reduce model development times and reduce time-to-market for new technologies and innovations.
The reorganisation is part of the ‘new management model’ unveiled in January, which has the aim of axing 6,000 administration jobs.
R&D employs around 11,000 staff.
Weber went on to explain that the DaimlerChrysler R&D organisation may employ fewer people in the future than it does now, but that is not the main issue. The main idea is to save money by sharing components that customers will never detect, while maintaining the brands’ own identities.
Weber told Reuters that development times from design freeze to market launch have already been reduced from 40-50 months to close to 30 months today, and that it is possible to reduce this even more. Model life cycles will remain at around six or seven years.
