Ward's Auto World - Citation

One of the Automotive Industrial magazine I read is Ward's" Auto World. Over the years, I have come across the word "Commonize" in some of their articles. Let's see if I can find any references.

A search of Ward's data, resulted in 127 hits. Wow. Here are a few references from as early as 1995.

Shedding the blues
Winter, DrewWard's
AutoWorld, Mar 1, 1995 12:00 PM

* Taken individually, cost-cutting concepts such as commonizing components, holding down staff sizes, squeezing supplier margins, hiring contract engineers and globally sourcing components - and many others - aren't viewed all that negatively. But put them all together and a high percentage of engineers are worried that these converging factors will hurt engineering quality - at least somewhat. Only 37% of OEMs and 31% of suppliers agree with one OEM engineer who says that "efficiencies can be achieved without any quality impact." Instead, most echo an engineering supervisor at Ford who complains: "So much more is being done with so much less in record time, quality has to suffer."

Inside GM Purchasing: sorting out the winners and losers
Smith, David C.
Ward's AutoWorld, Mar 1, 1995 12:00 PM

Buyer Horatio Seeley credits his conveyor creativity team with the idea of commonizing all paint-shop conveyor systems. This costbook for the particular system he's buying, to be used for a 1997 model, is $13-million-plus, but his final price comes in $1,569,000 under that. He also reports an $852,635 savings on a conveyor conversion carrying a $12.4 million bogie.