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The Science Advisory Committee

From 1980 till my retirement in 1989 I was the Secretary for the GM Science Advisory Committee. This was a committee of distinguished scientists from outside GM that met for two days six times a year at GM and was charged with reviewing all the technological activities of the Corporation, and providing their advice to the Executive Committee of the Corporation. There were six members who included several Nobel Prize winners at different times (Charley Townes, Bob Solow, Burton Richter). They were a very intelligent group, serious about their business, but also good-humored and down-to-earth. My job as Secretary was to set their agendas, make all the arrangements for their visits to different GM facilities, and draft their final report each year to the GM Executive Committee. I also attended the half-day meetings at which they discussed their report with the Executive Committee. Roger Smith chaired those meetings.

At various times the Committee and I traveled to GM facilities in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Rochester, New York, Arlington Texas, Fremont California, and many sites in Michigan. The distant trips were usually in the Corporation’s G2 Gulfstream jet plane, and on one occasion returning from Texas, all the Committee members took commercial flights to their home towns, and I came back to Detroit in the G2 with two pilots and a stewardess, basking in glory.

I believe the Science Advisory Committee had a significant effect on the Corporation. In addition to other lesser impacts, its pressure for production of a small car had some contribution to the development of the Saturn Division. It also exposed for upper management some of the initial culture-difference problems that accompanied incorporation of Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems into GM. And it pressed hard for adopting the Japanese style of manufacturing.

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