The systematic developed environment was removed to allow Alex and the team to meet the deadline and deliver the new and improved diesel engine within thirty six months. Even though certain engineers associated with the team weren’t “eager to work beyond the bounds of Ford’s familiar environment”. Another advantage that contributed to the team success was to obtain a type of synergy, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts. “Specialists use to working only with their own kind became more familiar with what other engineers were up to”. It illustrates the importance of what a difference it makes when the team works together as a group, rather than individuals.
Henry Ford created new technology that nobody has ever seen before. Firstly, Henry Ford began to experiment with a horseless carriage in 1890 and completed his first car, the quadricycle, in about 1896. During the following years he tried unsuccessfully to get it into production. The Model T was his most recognized piece of technology. The Model T was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from 1909 through 1927.
Ford Pinto Case In the 1970s, Ford Motor Company wanted to be ahead of the competition in the small car market therefore they were willing to compromise their safety standards for profit. They knew that the low standards would result in the deadly fires but thought that it would be too costly to stop production to redesign the car. They also believed that Safety did not sell cars. The part that would need to be installed in the Ford Pinto would have cost Ford $11 per car. Ford Motor Company was knowingly making cheap Pinto cars that exploded upon rear end collisions.
Using Budgets and Pro-Forma Statements to Plan Production Capacity One of my key lessons from this simulation was the importance of working in teams and openly discussing decisions that need to be made before making them. I approached the simulation as the only team member because the simulation didn’t include other participants. In retrospect, I would have assigned other members, at least in my mind, to gain additional team insights. I was not careful enough in setting pricing for my two products correctly in the second quarter when we actually began sales. I priced my high end Mercedes line accidentally at the price I had planned for my mainstream Workhorse line and vice-versa.
PRE-MODULE ASSIGNMENT: “KITTYHAWK” V ON M AXIMILIAN S TRAUBE In 1992 the Disk Memory Division (DMD) of Hewelett Packard (HP) introduced a new hard drive drive named Kittyhawk, which was aimed at a new market and there fore a blue ocean strategy. It was the first of its compact architecture (1.3 inch) and supposed to be used as mass storage in smaller electronic devices like PDA’s 1 or sub-notebooks. Unfortunately the initial 20 megabyte (MB) and the 40 MB of the second generation that fit on the hard drive turned out to be not sufficient enough for subnotebooks of HP’s own product line. Additionally, the sales of high-end PDA’s were unforeseeable disappointing due to other inadequate developed technologies. Whereas low-cost PDA’s simply did not need the performance of the Kittyhawk.
Consumers loved this sub-compact vehicle. Looking into the remarks of Mark Dowe from Pinto Madness, “he had put together the story printed here from data obtained for him by some very disaffected Ford engineers. The data suggested that the Pinto had been rushed into production without adequate testing; that it had a very vulnerable fuel system that would rupture with any rear-end collision; that even though the vulnerability was discovered before production, Ford had hurried the Pinto to the market anyway” (Treviño & Nelson, 2007, p. 292). If we were involved in the Ford case we would have considered all of the stakeholders and possible risks that could have been avoided. Taking into thought the long run of the company instead of the losses that the company would inquire in the short-term.
It was the hope of General Motors that it would save the company and be a serious contender in the auto manufacturing industry (Ingrassia & Halpert, 2009). The Saturn was the first new model for General Motors to introduce in 70 years and was supposed to be the key to the long-term completive markets and for a short minute the media held the American made vehicle quite highly even had governors fighting to have the auto manufacturing plant in their state. One of the ways, the Saturn corporation incorporated a quality of work life (QWL) program was to do-away with the standardized union contract with a revolutionized company friendly version that also changed how the employees viewed their work and how union employees were going to work inside the new plant. Employees would receive profits sharing instead of 401(K) plans, 20 percent of salaries were tied to quality and productivity. GM pledged to employees to provide
Iacocca wanted the care to be introduced in the 1971 model year with a suggested retail price of no more than $2,000 and with a weight of less than 2,000 pounds. Cost and weight constraints are something that automotive engineers always face, and Ford engineers certainly knew how to deal with them. However, the fast design cycle presented great challenges to the engineering staff. One of the myriad decisions that confronted the engineers was the placement of the gas tank. The tank could have been placed over the differential, where it would have been somewhat safe in the event of a rear-end collision.
Ford eventually relented and started offering the same terms in December 1927,when Ford unveiled the redesigned Model A, and retired the Model T after producing15 million units. During February 1922 Ford expanded its reach into the luxury auto market through its acquisition of the Lincoln Motor Company, named for Abraham Lincoln whom Henry Ford admired, but Henry M. Leland had named the company in 1917. The Mercury division was established in 1938 to serve the mid-price auto market. Ford Motor Company built the largest museum of American History in 1928, The Henry Ford.
Chabros International Group: A World Of Wood As many other companies Chabros International Group faced a financial crisis after the global economic crisis in 2009. The decision from Chami of investing $ 11 million in his Serbian sawmill was taking right before the beginning of the crisis and may have been crucial. Why did Chabros operate internationally? In order to understand Chami’s decision we have to take into account which reasons he argued for expanding his business outside of Lebanon. First of all, Lebanon was a very unstable country and when Chabros received by occasion the first orders from Lebanese customers in Dubai he did not think twice to expand into this country.