Economists usually focus on factories to measure productivity. Evolving Excellence points out that one might want to look at other costs too.
The papers submitted by Chrysler for its bankruptcy filing show an astonishing waste in its sales channel: the amount of people needed to sell and service a car is ridiculous.
So if Chrysler has 40,800 people and only 22,000 of them actually make cars, while the rest are involved in mostly non-value adding other things, that is a problem. But the really startling number in the filing is that Chrysler has 3,200 dealers which employee 140,000 people. 140,000 people working at dealerships and 22,000 people making cars??? It takes more than 6 people to sell and service a Chrysler for every 1 needed to build a Chrysler. How bad is a Chrysler if it takes that many people to convince people to buy one, then to keep it running?
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