Background
Seeing a Ford Model T or A driving down the road is a snap shot of history of American motor vehicles. Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry and set the standard for manufacturing products on an assembly line. In 1903, Henry Ford opened Ford Motor Company with $28,000 and sold his first Model A to Dr. E. Pfenning, a physician from Chicago, Illinois (Ford Motor Company, 2013). Since that first vehicle, Ford Motor Company has gone on to sell over 300 million vehicles.
Growth in Ford Motor Company created problems within the company. Poor quality plagued every line of vehicles produced by Ford. Growth included Ford Motor Company purchasing multiple vehicle brands from other companies in different countries. Operating one company that contains smaller companies can create inter organizational rivalry. Rivalry sent each company in its own direction and drained money from Ford Motor Company. Further complicating the issues at Ford Motor Company was the Great Recession.
The Great Recession affected the stock and house markets hard. Automotive industry was not immune to the ramification of the Great Recession. Rising gasoline price crippled Ford Motor Company flagship vehicles such as the SUV and Pickup based on their poor gas mileage. Caught on their heels, Ford Motor Company had no affordable vehicle platform that obtained good gas mileage. Looking for a new path, Ford Motor Company went outside the company to hire Alan Mulally. Mr. Mulally worked for the Boeing Company for 30 years, starting as an engineer and finishing as the Executive Vice President (Bloomberg Businessweek). Sixty days on the job, Mr. Mulally started the restructuring of Ford Motor Company; moving it forward as a global comp...
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...rd Motor Co.: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=370889&ticker=F
Bryce , G. H. (2012). American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company. New York, New York, United States of America: Crown Business. Retrieved from www.Amazon.com
Ford Motor Company. (2013). Company Milestones. Retrieved from Company Milestones: http://corporate.ford.com/our-company/heritage/company-milestones-news-detail/fs-heritage-ford-makes-first-sale
Ford Motor Company. (2013). One Ford Mission and Vision. Retrieved from Innovation: http://corporate.ford.com/doc/one_ford.pdf
Nelson, D. L., & Quick, J. C. (2013). Organizational Behavior Science, the Real World, and You (8th ed.). Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning.
The Economist. (2010, December 9). Epiphany in Dearborn. London, United Kingdom: The Economist Newspaper Limited.
Roger & Me shows that GM's board of directors used company profits not to create new jobs, but to buy already existing assets, such as data processing companies (EDS) and weapons manufacturers (Hughes Aircraft) at inflated prices, and to automate their current assembly lines, and build new plants in Mexico and in Asia -- destroying jobs in the United States in the process. In Mexico, GM pays the worker...
After 1933, government regulations and restrictions on production consistently reduced the company's capacity to act autonomously. As a commercial passenger vehicle production was slowly eradicated, government contracts became the sole source of business. Without these contracts, predominately for trucks in Ford-Werke's case, Ford would have lost all its German investment as the subsidiary withered due to a lack of market.
Henry Ford was born on July 30 in 1863 in Greenfield Township, Michigan he was one of the first American industrialists and wanted to make a difference in the automobile industry. Back then, before 1908 automobiles were expensive that only rich people could afford. Henry Ford wanted to change this and wanted everyone to have a vehicle to drive. He was able to accomplish this by the assembly line, in which it created more cars in less time. The first car Henry Ford made was the Model T created on the assembly line. Ford’s innovation in manufacturing created less expensive cars and higher wage jobs.
The 1920’s was a time of great social, political, and economic change. The early automobile industry was no exclusion. It appears that throughout history, the figures that stand out the most are either worshipped or despised, and there is very rarely an in-between. Henry Ford, an icon of the 1920’s and the early automobile industry is no exemption. Many people love Ford for his innovative and entrepreneurial skills, while on the other hand, Ford is disliked by many due to his association with Anti-Semitism. Regardless of how Ford is viewed, many decisions he made significantly impacted the automobile industry. These decisions included installing the moving assembly line in his plant, and introducing the Five-Dollar Day. Through the implementation of the Five-Dollar Day, Ford was able to drastically change how the Ford Motor Company company operated, and how business would operate for years to come.
Until recently, the Ford Motor Company has been one of the most dynastic of American enterprises, a factor which has both benefited the company and has brought it to the brink of disaster. Today Ford is the second largest manufacturer of automobiles and trucks in the world, and it’s operations are well diversified, both operationally and geographically. The company operates the worlds second largest finance company in the world, and is a major producer of tractors, glass and steel. It is most prominent in the US, but also has plants in Canada, Britain and Germany, and facilities in over 100 countries.
Model T’s were everywhere in America, even long after Ford stopped production in 1927. (Henry) While Ford was the number one brand, selling the most cars throughout the early 1900’s, the Model T created a new industry that is distinctly American; the auto industry. Three manufacturers, Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler dominated the American auto industry, and all three companies still produce cars today. The Model T gave birth to the competitive auto market. To this day, car companies in America are constantly racing to innovate, improve, and outsell their competitors. Manufacturing of cars “became the backbone of a new consumer goods-oriented society. By the mid-1920s it ranked first in value of product, and in 1982 it provided one out of every six jobs in the United States.” (history –idk yet) The demand for cars also resulted in a booming petroleum industry, and a high demand for metals, like steel. ( History idk yet) Furthermore, with so many people driving cars, construction of roads was necessary. The popularity of automobiles set off a chain reaction that created new opportunities all across the country. All sections of the modern automotive industry, from marketing to manufacturing, as well industries like petroleum refining, steel production, and road construction, can trace their beginnings to the Ford Model
Ford Motor Company current mission statement is “committed to provide personal mobility for people around the world”. With that in mind their vision is to become the world’s leading Consumer Company for automotive products and services. By improving everything they do, the company provide superior returns to their shareholders (Vision, Mission, Values).
Despite of these good things, Ford Motor faced a loss due to some wrong decisions taken by the management regarding their business strategy. The decision of centralizing the management made them think narrowly which results in too much Americanization and ignorance of local market in the rest of the world. This caused losing global market for them.
This paper takes a look at the ways in which the ideas of Fordism and Taylorism helped the success of the U.S motor vehicle industry. The motor vehicle industry has changed the fundamental ideas on the process of manufacturing and probably more expressively on how humans work together to create value.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2007). Organizational Behavior (12th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, United States of America: Pearson Prentise Hall.
In my research paper I would like to explore how different the markets, as well as union greed and board member mismanagement contributed to the failure of General Motors in 2009. I will take a close look at the collapses of the American Housing market in 2007 as well as the how the price of gasoline nearly doubled in 2008 and what roll those played within GM’s bankruptcy. While exploring these different markets, greed and mismanagement I intend to illustrate how they factored into what could be called the “perfect storm” toppling the Automotive Giant and leading to its
McShane, S.L. and Von Glinow, M. A. (2009). Organizational Behavior: Emerging knowledge and practice for the real world. McGraw-Hill.
Ford’s production plants rely on very high-tech computers and automated assembly. It takes a significant financial investment and time to reconfigure a production plant after a vehicle model is setup for assembly. Ford has made this mistake in the past and surprisingly hasn’t learned the valuable lesson as evidence from the hybrid revolution their missing out on today. Between 1927 and 1928, Ford set in motion their “1928 Plan” of establishing worldwide operations. Unfortunately, the strategic plan didn’t account for economic factors in Europe driving the demand for smaller vehicles. Henry Ford established plants in Europe for the larger North American model A. Their market share in 1929 was 5.7% in England and 7.2% in France (Dassbach, 1988). Economic changes can wreak havoc on a corporation’s bottom line and profitability as well as their brand.
...when the company focused on further improvements of its pickups and SUVs instead of focusing on innovations required by the changing demand. If the management had not been ignorant and would have developed sound strategy as soon as it spotted the change, the company would have avoided the crisis. However the company just recently adjusted its production plan and plans to continue realigning its manufacturing capacity, product mix and cut costs to fix the situation (“Ford Adjusts Production”).
...(Boudette, and Dolan, 2010). Ford is about to launch its smaller vehicles; less than two years ago Ford motor’s plant in Mexico was building big pick-up trucks. But it has retooled to produce Ford’s small Fiesta car, due to go on sale in America for the first time in June. (Simon, 2010).Mulally is the architect of Ford’s remarkable recovery in its fortunes.