Who is Gabriel Mark Hasselbach? The story behind the Jazz Force who just debuted two CDs at once to different jazz formats — Gabriel’s Horns to the smooth jazz format and Come Out Swingin’ (featuring guest vocalist Michael Bublé) for traditional jazz lovers.
“I thought it was important to learn the language,” says Cowger. “I was trying to do the same thing at Opel, except German was a lot harder to learn than Spanish.”
He took on the job of VP of European manufacturing for GM in January of 1998 and became group VP of labor relations in November of that year. In January of 2001, he was named group VP in charge of manufacturing and labor relations and took on his current responsibilities as president of GM North America in November of that year.
Layouts and processes are designed around providing support for the operators and teams on the plant floor. GMS cuts out waste, with the end result being a better quality product built in much less time.
Armed with a Bachelors Degree in industrial engineering from GMI and a Masters of Science degree from MIT, he left Kansas City in 1979 for the general superintendent’s job at the Lansing, Mich., assembly plant, part of the Oldsmobile division.
“I always thought it was really good,” Cowger says. “It makes you understand what people out there are going through and what the issues are.”
Cowger smiles and says, “I had never seen him reach in there and check a bolt.”
“I’ll tell you one of the things that was interesting to me,” he continues, “is that when you bolted seats, you knew when you got off and you stripped a bolt.”
Three years later he was appointed executive-in-charge of the North American Operations (NAO) Manufacturing Center and then named president and managing director of General Motors de Mexico the following year where he became somewhat of a folk hero to the locals, being the first GM executive to learn their language.