In the 70’s ethics was not on the forefront of business executives minds, especially when making decisions that could deeply affect the company. This landmark case allows future generations to use a utilitarian analysis to decide whether Ford should have made a different choice. In 1971, Ford Motor Company produced a compact car to the public in record time and at record prices. The quick production time of the Ford Pinto was a result of Ford attempting to keep up with the competition. However, as a result, the Pinto did not undergo all necessary safety tests before it was released.
Given the high cost and limited range, sales were disappointing. In 1997 GM develops its own fuel-cell stack technology including first fuel cell car prototype HydroGen1. The first mover strategy gave the company the capability to use patents and intellectual property difficult to copy from competitors. By 2000, the US market has matured and foreign competition has eroded the market share of the three domestic players to less than 60%. In 2000, GM started potential working on the interface between design and technology considering three important aspects for the new car: safety, environment and performance.
To cater for the demands of fragmented small cars market, Ford split the traditional B category cars into Basic-B, Trend-B and other-B. * After Renault moved into the fragmented small cars market with Twingo, which offered more features than just the Basic-B category cars, Ford came up with Ford Ka to respond to the competition in the same segment that Twingo competed in. * In response to develop a car quickly with low turn over time and development cost, Ford decided to manufacture Ka with chassis of old Fiesta, which was economical but at the same time hindered the technological innovation. So Ford Ka was not manufactured with a target segment on mind of the manufacturers. * This lack of customization of Ka towards a target segment caused confusions among the customers and it is evident from the target groups interviewed, they had different perceptions of the car.
In 1970 Ford Motor Company launched their new line of automobile called the Ford Pinto; they used a cost-benefit analysis based strictly on how the consequences will affect themselves as a business and not as an ethical analysis. The Pinto compact car was extremely popular in the United States market because of its design and affordability. However a controversy issue regarding the safety of the design of the car gas tank emerged causing deadly fires, explosions and claiming the lives of many people, even though managers and engineers of the company knew about this problem. The argument has been for many years that Ford Motor Company abandoned and abused the utilitarian principles to suit their needs, even though they stayed within the laws of the time, they still behaved unethically by making the decision not to upgrade the fuel system of their product. The model of the Ford Pinto was approved by Lee Iacocca, Executive Vice-president of Northern American Automotive Products for Ford.
They were just added to the Ford Empire and became another source profit making. In recent years due to financial struggles Ford was forced to sell off Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover. Today Ford is still a dominant car manufacture and car retailer .Ford are located in the Merseyside region of Halewood, this plant concentrates on the new Land Rover Freelander. The Ford Halewood factory started in 1963 and was initially a £30 million factory originally intended to hire 9000 workers The reason Ford started this plant was because they were given incentives by the government in a bid to try to reduce unemployment. At its peak Halewood hired 14,500 people.
The car companies had to comply if they wanted to sell cars in California, and at first they did. However, as the years went on, the car companies fought the law saying that the rising percentage of how many electric cars they had to sell per year was too high. Led by General Motors, a couple car companies and dealerships banded together and sued the California’s Air Resources Board (C.A.R.B.) for their electric car mandate. At first, it looked like the electric car mandate was going to stay, but then the car companies found a new and powerful ally.
The first analyzed that there was no direct feedback from the customers. How is Ford creating a desirable product for customers when they have no feedback from them? Instead, they are creating vehicles that they are pushing out onto their customer base. Second, Ford is managing a huge supplier network. Having such a large network has made them more vulnerable to the bullwhip effect.
Colton Greene Mr. Bates – 6 English Literature 12 12 February 2014 Senior Research Paper – Final Draft How Henry Ford Affected the Lives of the American People Imagine if Henry Ford did not invent the moving assembly line back in 1913. In that time, cars would not have been affordable and people would not have been able to get around as easily. If he did not make the first moving assembly line, most things today would not be as mass produced. Henry Ford directly impacted the lives of the people of his time by making cars more affordable and, without knowing, impacted the lives of many generations to come because the assembly line made it easier and faster to make products. To understand the impact of an assembly line one must first know what an assembly line is.
There was strong competition for Ford in the American small-car market from Volkswagen and several Japanese companies in the 1960’s. To fight the competition, Ford rushed its newest car the Pinto into production in much less time than it usually required to develop a car. The regular time to produce an automobile is 43 months; Ford took 25 months. Before production however, Ford engineers discovered a major flaw in the cars design. In nearly all rear-end crash test collisions, the Pinto's fuel system would rupture extremely easily.
Ford Pinto Case Study MGT 216 11/17/2011 Vivek Singhal Many in the corporate world are willing to do whatever it takes to compete in the global market. However, ethical business practices should always be a top priority. No company understands this better than Ford and the mistakes the company made with the release of the Ford Pinto. In 1969, Lee Iacocca, president of Ford Motor Company, convinced CEO Henry Ford II to be a competitor in the small car market, thus launching the birth of the Ford Pinto. Typically it took automobile makers approximately 3.5 years to release an automobile to the public.