@Robert M I've seen that territorialism a lot, although we solved it at EMC by integrating most major functions into our core product teams and then searched far and wide for the proper people to lead the teams, realizing that all teams are different because of the product they're working on and the skill sets of the team members.
I brought a guy with me from a startup to EMC. At the time he would have been described as moderately dyslexic because he was unable to construct sentences on paper or overheads. He was OK in meetings (if a little impatient with his team members - OK, so, a LOT impatient!) His presentation skills were limited by his impatience with others. What I had found out was that he could look at something, take it apart in his mind and see all of the individual parts and how they assembled and worked or didn't work. He would do this in seconds (it was pretty impressive to see), even with design drawings. Sounds kind-of like your brother, and companies are very lucky to recognize this sort of talent and encourage it to grow, because it is not often accepted by designers.
Eventually, once we gotten heavily into Computer Aided design, he could do the same thing right on the CAD screen. He was a genius at it and became a company treasure so we supplied him with an intern to write stuff for him (and they learned the company and design groups from following him around), convinced him to work on his people skills (that was tough for him to do) and become a product evangelist, wandering around to different meetings and dropping hints (he called them "Tedbits" - Ted was his name). I can't remember how many designs and patents he influenced, but it was a lot. Ted was from Oklahoma, as was our VP of Quality and to hear them together in a meeting with designers was a hoot with all of their OK sayings. They'd be looking at some prints and you would hear something like:
" THAT dog cain't HUNT! And here's WHY! "
Today, I suppose we would describe Ted as highly functioning on the Autistic scale. Back then, the designers just called him their conscience..... Actually, he's now retired and bugging his town government.
Interestingly enough, he became pretty effective with the software people, too and he had an extraordinarily retentive memory. He would wander into a meeting and sit quietly while someone as explaining how their code worked and then ask, "What happens when the customer does this and this, followed by this?" The designers, being infallible, would say, "That'll never happen."
"Yeah, OK, but it happened to XYZ bank in Charlotte seven months ago, exactly like that."
Sure enough, when they checked it out, he was right.
Happened a lot. Thank God there are more Teds and guys like your brother out there.
Getting back to the original topic, It is just as important to save money on repairs as it is in the original product cost to be competitive. If you go to a dealer to replace a non-warranty headlight bulb which requires an entire headlight assembly swap at $1,500+ bucks AND they have to spend 4 hours taking the vehicle front end apart to swap it out AND the customer gets a bill for $2,100 bucks, do you think they'll be thrilled about buying another car of that make? I know that others might be just as bad, but the owner will only see THAT vehicle and probably won't buy another one.
OTOH, if bulbs are swappable and you can do it in 30 minutes or less, that's a BIG difference in customer/owner perception.
You guys sound like old men. More than 20 years ago I was riding jump seat in a B757 and the captain asked if I would like to see them perform an auto land. It was pretty cool.
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