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...
... middle of paper ...
...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.
Shortly afterwards, with financial backing from private investors, Ford established the Detroit Automobile Company. He later withdrew from the venture after a disagreement with business associates over numbers and prices of cars to be produced. Working independently in a small shed in Detroit, Henry Ford developed two four cylinder, 80-horsepower race cars called the “999” and the “Arrow”, with $28,000 of capital raised from friends and neighbors. Henry Ford established a new shop on June 16, 1903. In this facility the Ford Motor Company began production of a two cylinder, eight-horsepower design called the Model A. The company produced 1,708 of these models in the first year of operation.
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
Many economic factors exist that impact the development of Ford Motor Company's strategic plan and it’s no small task to project how some of these factors might change as the strategy is being realized. Consider the prospect of expansion into a new market like China or Mexico. Economic changes like currency devaluation will make Ford’s product more expensive to their target market potentially reducing overall sales revenue. Oil prices as we’ve seen in the U.S. economy can also play a big factor as large vehicles become less desirable and more fuel efficient compact cars gain market share.
...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”).
Over time, Ford business strategy has responded to the challenges of the motor industry. The corporate culture of Ford management is establishing strategic business units that complement the company's global scale and structure.
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.
... The relationship between manufacturers, dealers, suppliers and customers has dramatically improved. In fact, Ford has been the only one of the three big automobile companies in Detroit not to accept a U.S. government bail-out or file for bankruptcy protection, as its rivals General Motors and Chrysler did last year. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford sales in April 2010 climbed to 25% as compared to GM’s 7.2%.