To start with General Motors was a company that sold half of the cars in America, employed in its various guises as many people as the combined populations of Nevada and Delaware and was considered as a model for managers all over the world. The Company was designed according to the needs of his customers (“a car for every purse and purpose”). The company structure was created in the 1920s, in which professional managers would report to a head office through strict financial monitoring and later on model spread across the world.
Apart from collapse of subprime mortgage market the other reason of general motor decline was the entry of new models from Asia, notably Toyota, Nissan, and Hyundai, which were seizing market share from the US-based auto companies. For many years GM suffers huge losses because of focus on the production of large, fuel-inefficient vehicles that allowed purchasers to pay for fuel efficient vehicle that were introduced by Asian Market. The other reason was employee benefits that were becoming costly to maintain especially pensions and healthcare. Recession also added for huge loss in demand of cars and trucks leading to decline in sales of GM as people were more concerned about their jobs losses and insecurity. However in 2009 the company filed for bankruptcy that is designed to allow company to remain in business while working on recovery plan at the same time.
The company was taking the big risks of financial. Due to the firm was started winding down after collapse of the Bear Stearns hedge fund. The firm also had accumulated a very large commercial real estate portfolio. The CEO of the firm believed that it had sufficient funds to tackle the problems after borrow money from the federal reserved investment.
Achieving world class business performance is a major challenge in today’s society. Manufacturing companies continue to face increased competition and globalization from its competitors. (1, p. 148). The automotive industry is one of the most volatile manufacturing industries that we have, which was evident in the 2008 – 2010 automotive industry crisis. (2) This global financial downturn served notice to the American automotive manufactures to raise the bar, in order to achieve word class business performance. General Motors, one of the country’s largest automotive manufactures, had to receive a government bailout to survive. During this time many with the corporation asked themselves, if we were a world class business, would we be facing this pending crisis. The answer was a resounding “NO”. General Motors has come out of bankruptcy and is focused on being a world-class business organization.
General Motors is one of the world's most dominant automakers from 1931. After 1980s economic recession the main goal for automobile companies was cost reduction. Customers became more price-sensitive. Also Japanese competitors came into market with the new effective system of production. So market was highly competitive and directed toward price reduction. The case states that in 1991 GM suffered $ 4.5 billion losses and most part of the costs of manufacturing was due to purchased components. GM NA hired Lopez in order to find the way from "extraordinary" situation and reduce costs.
Goldratt takes a very practical example of today’s world, an Engineer with an MBA degree, Mr. Alex Rogo, as his protagonist and his struggle to get a loss making company to a profit making one along with his family in the back-ground, obviously an important one, to explain the drudgeries of a manufacturing engineer’s life. Goldratt explains several management skills to be inherited in any professional’s life with ease, in this thought provoking novel based management textbook. The ideas expressed in this book, although difficult to be digested normally, are easily conceptualized in the form of a novel, which any professional can easily relate to.
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.
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, shortly known as BMW, is a German manufacturer of luxurious automobiles and motorcycles. BMW group is not simply one name: it is also the parent company of other premium brands such as the MINI, the Rolls-Royce and the motorcycling company Husqvarna. For the purpose of providing a maximum of details, this essay will just focus on the automobile part of BMW as it is more significant than the motorcycle segment and since they have a lot of overlapping factors.
Tom Peters and Robert Waterman were also scholars back in the 1980s who also wrote an international best seller. Their book focused on the type of relationships the manager have with their customers and their employees. Peters and Waterman book focused on a total of 43 companies in six different industries where there book focused on nine principles of management which are the
As a result of the increased demand of cars, the competition among car companies is becoming intense. Although the market of car is the biggest growing market in the world, there are still some companies who make cars failing year after year. However, there are some outstanding car companies such as The BMW Group performing distinctly.
“Management is a process of planning, organisation, command, coordination, and control” (Morgan 2006, p.18). Rational organisation design is a bureaucratic method of management which emphasizes efficiency to achieve the end goal and the management of multiple companies have taken upon this system. Figures such as Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford have both shown and laid a path way for Rational Organisation which has become known as Taylorism and Fordism. The design has received criticism and both Taylor and Ford have been portrayed as villains with Taylor being called “enemy of the working man” (Morgan 2006, p.23) as the system dehumanised workers by taking all of the thought and skill from them and giving it to the managers this is because the tasks given were simple and repetitive. As staff needed little training they became an easily replaceable asset and thus more machine than human.
Toyota was forced into adapting its strategies to different marketplaces as well as altering its management style. For example in Toyota UK the organisational structure corresponds to the traditional Toyota system which encourages team working and communication between workers this was done through training, sharing of information and knowledge between teams and team members. The fact that Toyota dealt with trade unions, shows departure from traditional Japanese organisational behaviour represented innovative adaptations on the part of the company to operating in the UK.
When you look at the history of General Motors, you will find a long, rich heritage. General Motors came into existence in 1908 when it was founded by William "Billy" Durant. At that time Buick Motor Company was a member of GM. over the years GM would acquire more than 20 companies, to include Opel, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile. By the 1960's through 1979 was known as a revolution period for General Motors. Everyone was focusing on environmental concerns, increased prices of gasoline lead to the unprecedented downsizing of vehicles. The smaller cars lead to one the largest re-engineering program ever taken in the industry. By 1973, General Motors was the first to offer an air bag in a production car.
In my opinion, there are some managerial roles that a manager needs to follow to become successful in the company. Depending on organizations these managerial roles changes and to be successful in business, every organization must assign right person for managerial roles. Finding a right person to a particular managerial role is really hard to do but there is another factor that we can consider here, which is the managerial skills. Managerial skills help a person to perform the managerial roles effectively. So by evaluating a person’s managerial skills we can identify whether he is suitable for particular managerial job or not. There is a company called Tata group, which is one of India’s biggest company, follows certain procedures which is called the Tata way, for dealing managers which includes hiring, training and assigning efficiently and effectively. This is reason why managerial job in the Tata group became my favorite job. This paper examines how this unique procedure for dealing managers make the Tata group successive and how can the study of organizational behavior help to replicate it and maybe even improve it.
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.
Over the past hundred years management has continuously been evolving. There have been a wide range of approaches in how to deal with management or better yet how to improve management functions in our ever changing environment. From as early as 1100 B.C managers have been struggling with the same issues and problems that manager’s face today. Modern managers use many of the practices, principles, and techniques developed from earlier concepts and experiences.
Over recent years companies have become less dependent on paper and more dependent on technology. Take American Honda Motors for example; the Davenport Parts facility recently converted computer systems to more efficiently manage its inventory. Prior to its new system months of preparation was needed in order to ensure a smooth change over. Without the four basic functions of management all working together success would not have been possible.