An amusing mystery: 1971 911S Coupé

[911MRP]

I’ve found this comment which seems to suggest it’s begins 1 August or did around the period in question:

“1972. At the beginning of the year, the partners of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG passed a resolution to convert the limited partnership into a joint-stock corporation, to take effect from the beginning of the fiscal year on August 1. Dr. Ferry Porsche took over as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann was appointed spokesman of the Board of Management of Porsche AG. The conversion was preceded by a resolution by the Porsche and Piëch families stating that in future they no longer intended to appoint family members to executive management positions.
1973: Following the company’s conversion into a joint-stock corporation the year before, the name “Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG” was officially entered in the trade register on March 1“

I found the above on a modern Porsche AG site on www so it most be true .. ha ha. While the KG to AG change is not new the comment within it seems quite specific about the start of fiscal yearly cycle. However given the sometimes woeful understanding shown at times by todays AG people about their corporate history I’d prefer to see this corroborated an original document image dating from back the day rather than in a modern summary — for some reason even though it’s not something I’ve looked into I’ve a feeling Porsche fiscal year was / is ( more) aligned to calendar year but not sure why I thought that? Possibly impression is due to the press releases summarising the full report appears in things like panorama etc with a lead tome for the results to be approved and then written up for external consumption by readers of such magazines. Isn’t Volkswagen group year end reporting period end Dec? At the time VG was a fifty fifty sales venture VW - Porsche not just for the 914 but on Europe all Porsche product — not sure without knowing source if some of what summarising this are sales volume or production. Think the figures I posted on image production volume but being a press release hard to sure without seeing data at source which might not been available with KG being limited partnership — that’s before any accountants play around with numbers and PR dept put on the spin.

Anyone got an original fiscal report or other pertinent information from the early 70s?

Steve

[911MRP]

Also found this on www

“ Stuttgart, 15 December 2009. The supervisory board and the executive board of Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Stuttgart, have decided to propose to the next annual general meeting that the Porsche fiscal year be aligned with the calendar year. The company's fiscal year currently runs from 1 August of one year to 31 July of the following year. If the annual general meeting on 29 January 2010 in the Porsche-Arena in Stuttgart approves the change, Porsche will have an abbreviated fiscal year in the coming year. It would be introduced following the close of the fiscal year 2009/10 ending 31 July 2010 for the period from 1 August 2010 to 31 December 2010. The year 2011 would then be the first fiscal year of Porsche to match the calendar year.“

Which might explain why I had a vague impression fiscal was end of calendar year aligned but evidently it was not until comparatively recently, long after the period of most interest to ESR.

While I’ve seen many “annual reviews” put out by Porsche as press releases for the early 911 period I don’t recall ever seeing any original accounts for Porsche on that period — perhaps the KG to AG would have brought the need for more financial transparency. While it won’t help the details of 71 vin gaps I’d certainly like to see anything published under the new potentially more transparent AG corporate structure even if the prior KG limited partnership accounting wasn’t required to be openly available
Steve

[911MRP]

To give some indication of the build rate at that time i know from other sources by the spring of 1972 the unit-production was 62-65 per day
The timing was:
1 day assembly of body shell
2 days painting of body shell
1 day body trim and finishing
1 day final assembly of mechanical parts
2 days testing, checking and adjusting the finished car.

In the body trim line the cars were moved at six min intervals on trollies from works sation to work station.

Information perhaps slightly pertinent in this thread even if higher than 71 maybe close to the initial plans before thing went pear shaped — the above are notes from a factory visit on spring 1972 roughly one quarter after press release on prior post was published. The volumes had risen but it gives some feeling for the typical cadence of assembly and supply chain volumes that the operations staff were coping with around the time the problems reported in 1971. Likely the sales forecasts driving the S&OP in 1971 were much higher than how volumes turned out but had similar cadence.

Do these snipers help historians approximate the impact of each lost day through strike action or the gap of due to an importer selling down inventory when cancelling a scheduled build slot; or because a confirmed slot wasn’t possible to industrial action? They would’ve been used to issues happening and mitigating them but from the reports sounds like 71 was exception level bit just the usual fun and game. The figures are the narrow view of assembly but give some idea of the drumbeat and down the entire supply chain: inbound and outbound affecting commitments to many third parties.

Coping with challenges not helped that it all had to be monitored and controlled and using technology of the day some departmental ( silo’s disconnected) systems, punched cards, telex, manual data entry, batch processing, phone calls etc. While I don’t knownowhapse the clunky ways of working contributed to discontinuities in Vin sequence being observed today? I wouldn’t discount that as a factor with the exceptional level of disruption that year.

Not sure how much can derive from a press release and a factory visit report but it’s what we have — the reported two week strike if factory had a five day working week would be approx (60x10) 600 units output (assuming to be slightly lower than Spring 1972 62-65 daily rate). So say output was 60 per day the strike would be above the missing 250 ish. Although when work resumes build picks up up the but build slots lost capacity. Maybe helpful if coincided with the cancelled demand, but what’s the betting it didn’t. Unfortunately the dates of stiles and even the actual period covered in the report are woolly.

In their “ways of working” of that era how would they have administered the cancellation of a block of build slots die to importers selling down inventory (perhaps at short notice after orders had been enters into the clunky scheduling system of the day? How would they have administered a loss of confirmed build slots due to industrial action?

The vin number is a keystone datapoint on the through life fulfilment and after-sales support so much together on the order’s lifecycle so significant gap ( around 250 if I understand first post correctly) does seem strange when the years immediately before and after 71 don’t exhibit the same. Perhaps not so simple to make that era as on todays ways of working before PLM and ERP systems helped the admin and reality say in step.

Maybe as was suggested previously after a tough long day sorting out the mess, one of the exasperated staff just stuffed a batch of 250 vin stickers in his pocket and hoped that no one would notice .. ha ha!

These excerpts below show give a small sense of the pressure rolled down onto operations leadership from thing many of which were beyond their immediate control:





Operations compared to some other parts of business is pretty black and white: the product gets made on-time, to-quality and to-budget; or it doesn’t. While I’m sure the person with oversight for Porsche had a great job probably it was not fun to be in the hot seat given that level of y-o-y sales drop requiring operations to take the correct tough actions. Even if sales had dropped the ball to the tine of 100mDM being further down the chain it would be operations who needed to make good. Also solve it own problems on labour force. I’m sure the person occupying the hot seat was as the famous old business saying goes “getting far more help than he ever needed” in the intimate limited partnership KG ownership structure of the day! Were the events of 1971 one of the reason to change to AG and bring more professional management in 1972?

Steve

[rgupta250]

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