2012-02-05 13:31:38

Hyundai’s CEO John Krafcik was always Driven to Succeed

Aug 23, 2010 // No Comment // Categories: Articles, Corporate, Fun Stuff // Tags: 2011, Corporate, hyundai, Hyundai Assurance, Hyundai CEO, new, new car, ok, okc, oklahoma, oklahoma city.

John Krafcik at Automotive Hall of Fame

John Krafcik is well-known for his success in the automotive industry. He continues his success with Hyundai Motor America driving up sales and the Hyundai name.

Krafcik has managed to move Hyundai up the ladder in the United States sales bracket.

According to USA Today, “Krafcik has guided Hyundai from No. 9 in U.S. sales in 2007 to seventh among individual brands through July this year.”

Since 2004, Hyundai has introduced seven new models and the new models keep on coming. Krafcik and his South Korean parent company have ambitious goals in mind including more new models such as the all-new 2011 Equus and the goal of 50 miles per gallon for the entire Hyundai lineup by 2025.

“Hyundai is moving up the ladder to the top tier in quality,” according to USA Today, “Hyundai’s breakout, coming even as the automotive industry faced some of its hardest times, has made Krafcik a rising star.”

Hyundai really thought about their consumers when the recession took its first initial hit. They formed the Hyundai Assurance program, offering to take back cars from customers who lost their jobs. Hyundai also serves as America’s Best Warranty and extended this program through the 2010 year.

John Krafcik acting CEO of Hyundai

History about John Krafcik according to USA Today:

Krafcik, 48, grew up in Southington, Conn., the youngest of eight children. His father was a tool-and-die maker who thought his son might become a writer. But Krafcik says the car bug bit at an early age. He yearned to design cars and would eagerly await the arrival of his brother’s Car and Driver magazine in the mail.

He graduated from Stanford University with a mechanical engineering degree, but his first job was in sales, hawking solar water heaters. He then went to Xerox.

Sticking around Northern California while his future wife was finishing at Stanford, Krafcik got his first auto break with a venture Toyota and General Motors were setting up in Fremont, Calif., to build small cars for both companies. New United Motor Manufacturing (or NUMMI) was a chance for GM to learn Toyota quality methods and for Toyota to try operating a U.S. plant.

Hired as a manufacturing engineer, Krafcik says the experience “was just awesome,” especially his Toyota-trained boss, who wanted him to see what makes an auto plant succeed or fail. Krafcik was dispatched to GM’s plant in Oklahoma City, where he says he saw half-built cars backed up and workers napping on the job. Then he went to Toyota City in Japan, a plant he says was so well laid out and efficient he could see across it to the other side. There was little inventory, with parts arriving from suppliers only hours before they were needed.

With a growing knowledge of auto production, Krafcik’s next step was to get a master’s degree in management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in Boston, he saw posted on a bulletin board a job with James Womack, a leader in auto plant productivity and co-author of the groundbreaking The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production. He got the job, which let him tour auto plants worldwide.

Not only was Krafcik “incredibly focused” and a “completely solid guy,” Womack says, he also had the diplomatic skills to handle evasive plant managers. “He’s such a graceful guy that even when he’s telling you you’re completely full of crap, no one is getting mad,” Womack says.

Krafcik opened a consultancy, then took a job at Ford Motor, in Dearborn, Mich.: “I wanted to design and develop products.”

He first was assigned to an in-house think tank, then to product planning. Most of the ideas were being rejected. (One, for a small crossover, later was adopted by Toyota, becoming the hit RAV4.)

His goal remained clear: “I wanted to get my hands dirty” and run a vehicle-development program, he says, so he went over to engineering. He started out supervising truck suspension design and worked on a European van. Then he was put in charge of developing the next generation of Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator.

He loved it. With 10,000 parts to worry about and a team to guide, “You are the ultimate conductor,” he says. And he got to innovate. He gave the trucks independent rear suspension. Without a traditional rear axle in the way, third-row seats could fold into the floor, rather than have to be wrestled out when the space was needed for cargo.

Krafcik’s career goal had been to lord over a vehicle from design to production. But he’d stayed in Michigan four years beyond the 10 years he’d promised his wife. So he returned to California in 2004, to a product-planning job at Hyundai, based in the Orange County enclave of Fountain Valley. The new vice president arrived just in time for the first seven-models-in-two-years effort.

For the job interview, Krafcik had presented a detailed PowerPoint assessing Hyundai strengths and weaknesses. “He had an understanding of where the company was and where it needed to be,” says consultant Bob Cosmai, former U.S. CEO for Hyundai. “John wanted to be involved in a lot of things.”

Krafcik became CEO in 2008.