[Andy Baker]

Elgin,

This is cool. Thanks for posting it. Your correlation is clear and well-written. My brother teaches a course like this at Tennessee Tech., as he is a professor of composition (Dr. Tony Baker).

Since you brought this up, here is some history behind our company's name: Delphi.

General Motors used to be much bigger than it is today. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but I am guessing that it was almost twice as big as today's size during its hay-day in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Back then, GM was very "vertically integrated" and they owned many supplier companies such as Delco Electronics, Packard Electric, Saginaw Steering, Harrison Radiator, Fisher Body, and such. These supplier companies were huge but only known within GM, since GM was their only customer.

In the 1980's and 90's, these divisions were grouped into one division called "Automotive Components Group" (ACG), with JT Battenberg III (current CEO of Delphi and member of FIRST's board of directors) as the president of this division. During the mid-90's, GM's philosophy changed when it came to their supplier base. They started buying stuff from other vendors who were not in ACG. They would take part prints from ACG products and competitively quote them with other worldwide suppliers. During this time, some strikes happened at a few ACG plants and GM had some setbacks.

Through this time, GM was trying to improve quality and market share, after declines in each. They decided to "spin off" the ACG group. Before the spin-off happened, ACG needed a better name. Knowing that ACG was going to be a group of divisions (Delco, Saginaw, Packard, Harrison, Fisher) that needed a common marketing "front", they thought of a new name. This name needed to represent expertise and wisdom. It also needed to convey the idea that this company can take care of many of its customer's needs. The company name became Delphi Automotive. This name portrays our company as being able to easily provide "the answer" to our customers needs, whatever they may be.

The way things are now, GM is doing better without Delphi (or ACG) as part of their company. Also, Delphi is the world's largest automotive parts supplier. It's really been a win-win situation, I think. Within a few years (if it hasn't been done already), people will be writing books about this transformation of GM and creation of Delphi. It's pretty cool to be a small part of it.

At least, that is how I see things. We still have these divisions, but we all call ourselves Delphi.

I know, I know... this is probably "way too much information", but some of you may like it.

Andy B.