Right now huge amount of focus is on how the pending auto industry bailout will affect the automotive industry in the United States. One thing is for sure that the auto industry bailout will have huge implications for the IT industry that supports the big three automakers. This will be one of the first times that the industry will be receiving such large financial to help and along with that amount of public money a number of rather large requirements are being asked of them. These rules for stringent oversight and some actual quantification of results and productivity gains will be some of the key factors driving the increase in IT usage and capital expenditures. In an economy doing as poorly as the one we're currently experiencing this influx of money will greatly help the faltering IT industry.
Job Retention
Obviously it goes without saying that the greatest immediate impact will be in the rention of jobs. The first thing that people think of when considering the auto industry is the assembly line worker or welding technician putting together the actual cars themselves. But what people often forget is the fact that behind those assembly line workers are a
massive amount of IT professionals servicing the extensive electronic and information technology components associated with assembling a piece of machinery as complex as a modern-day automobile. Though the United States auto industry has seemingly been lagging behind the Japanese carmakers significant strides have been made to increase productivity and efficiency throughout the entire automobile manufacturing process. If the auto industry bailout did not happen these highly trained and specialized information technology workers would find themselves entering into one of the worst job markets in recent memory. So the immediate impact in the retention of jobs inside of the information technology industry associated with the automobile industry will be immediately apparent. One aspect that many analysts may not be considering the number of jobs or opportunities the bailout will become a catalyst for.Increased Research and Development
It has become apparently clear that this time around the auto industry will not be receiving a blank check. They will not be able to spend the taxpayers hard-earned dollars without showing some definite strides towards becoming a new and more efficient industry. To attain this lofty and seemingly impossible goal the auto industry will have to use a large portion of their funds to increase the overall research and development budgets. Significant pressure will be placed on them to increase the amount of "green vehicles" that they currently offer within their product lines. These increases in research and development initiatives are going to require an additional information technology resources to support the aggregation and collection of data from multiple laboratories and testing facilities. Which obviously in turn put significant pressure on information technology resources and hopefully create additional job opportunities for trained technical employees. I'm sure a welcome impact to the many information technology employees who have been recently laid off from any of the Wall Street investment banking houses.
Increased Productivity Efficiency
No matter what way the auto industry looks at the problem and will continue to have a higher per capita employee expense per vehicle made than their Japanese competitors. The only way they will be able to compete with nonunion manufacturing facilities is to continue creating new opportunities for increasing efficiency to help offset costs associated with higher health care and overall employee benefit packages. The only way you can possibly achieve any of these goals to increase overall efficiency and output of your current facilities. Whenever looking at any efficiency audits the core components will always be information technology resources. Computer systems have shown their value as assets that are able to increase the amount of work a single employee is able to accomplish while reducing overall waste and capital expenditures associated with mistakes. When you need to add additional information technology resources to your auto assembly line you obviously need to add additional IT related employees. Another great opportunity for trained computer specialist.
Increased Government Oversight
the government has also made clear that they will be requiring auto industry leaders to provide greater accountability for all capital spent during the auto industry bailout. For automakers to meet these obligations it will additional compliance-based systems so that e-mails and/or electronic work products can be produced upon request for government oversight committees. My personal opinion is that we are going to see products that were originally designed for Sarbanes-Oxley requests to begin to become modified to also meet the oversight committee requests that automakers will now have to complete and timely fashion. These modifications to complex enterprise data systems will have to be accomplished by IT industry personnel and will perhaps spawn a small highly specialized group of consulting firms to assist automobile manufacturers with the process.
Hopefully this will be a bit of positive news and other wine negative economy for the IT industry who was found themselves once again devastated by a faltering IT services and consulting market. One has to remember that even during tough markets opportunities to arise for those who are able to find them.
