He told me, “At BMW, manufacturing would not question the design for two reasons. First, they would respect the engineers and have confidence in their design and the reasons for it. Second, they would accept the challenge and find a way to manufacture it. They would never say, ‘We cannot do it.’” He continued, “Those problems are unheard of for a BMW engineer.” — Chrysler Engine Block SE Team Member In early September 1997, Jack Smith was trying to decide how to resolve an impasse between the product design engineers and advanced manufacturing engineers. Ten months earlier, Smith had become the project leader for Chrysler’s joint venture with BMW.
Ford also announced that it would distribute ownership of its Visteon Corp. parts unit to shareholders. Ford’s share price had performed poorly over the previous year (Exhibit 1), and the proposal drew a positive reaction from analysts who had been urging the company for months to distribute cash to stockholders. Some hailed the VEP as the boldest step yet by Ford Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. and Chief Executive Officer Jacques Nasser to convince investors that they were undervaluing the world’s No. 2 automaker. However, the plan raised a number of questions for investors.
This led to quality assurance centres being established at various delivery locations to resolve quality issues before delivery to dealerships. Embarrassingly for DMC, many of these first production cars went to prominent investors. Most quality issues were solved by 1982 but these early build problems and warranty claims set the company back another $4 million. The cars were originally sold from dealers with a one-year, 12,000-mile warranty. The car was named DMC-12 because of its intended retail price of $12,000.
Was it motivation, time, money, knowledge, or supplies? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the project life cycle that is evident, was it effective having two project managers, the toughest challenges that were faced by this high-risk project and finally discuss whether the hybrid team was efficient. Brief Background of Closing Case The closing case of “Ford’s Hybrid SUV Project Team Races to the Finish” discussed how the creation of the Ford Hybrid Escape could be one of the most important vehicles in company history. It also discussed how things were not running smoothly in the beginning. Although there were several highly educated team players that held PhDs, there was one major weakness: launch experience.
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.
Development The poor market performance of the Smart for-two could have been cause by a sum of different factors ; among them, analysis show that during the time of the launch of the Smart for-two the sport utility vehicle was one of the larges competitors in the market and consumers in the US where not ready to sacrifice size for the sake of saving money at the pump. Another factor could be appointed to the highly competitive compact-car segment and the costly restructuring to reduce Smart’s fixed cost. These factors hurt the brand even thought that its global sales had been growing steadily. Conclusion. It seems that the innovative and progressive thinking of Mercedes Benz was a little to early for market assimilation; Since at the time the European market demand for a smaller vehicle to tackle the narrow streets differ from the American consumers demands which at the moment favor what the SUV'S had to offer; size over savings.
This was no different with on of DEP’s main customers Gard Automotive Manufacturing (GARD). Mike O’Leary the purchasing agent for Gard has also believed that other competitors couldn't match DEP’s quality. It seems that O’Leary and Lippet have become comfortable with their arrangement over the years so when contract renewals came up it was understood that DEP would always win the bid. O’Leary even went as far to say that, “If it ain't broke don’t fix it!” (Bowersox, Closs, & Cooper, 2007, p.432) This year however would be a little different with the announcement of O’Learys retirement Gard brought in a man by the name of Richard Binish. Binish who has an MBA in purchasing and logistics and also practices JIT concepts accepted the job of O’Leary’s successor believing he could help launch Gard into a new way of doing business.Binish was quick to evaluate O’Leary’s deals that he had made in the past and his relationship with DEP was no different.
Everything changed once he accepted a position as Project Manager on the Orion Shield Project. "This is impossible! Just totally impossible! Ten months ago I was sitting on top of the world. Upper-level management considered me one of the best, if not the best engineer in the plant.
Iacocca believed Ford needed to compete in the small car market alongside German and Japanese car manufacturers. However, the president of Ford at the time, Semon Knudsen, disagreed and wanted to continue with their current models of medium and large vehicles. CEO Henry Ford II agreed with Iacocca in competing in the small car market, Semon was forced to resign and Iacocca was promoted to president of Ford. Iacocca created the Pinto with a launch time of just over two years, since the car was produced so rapidly it failed to meet satisfactorily on the processes
The acquisition of NeXT brought back Steve Jobs and his operating system he developed at NeXT step. This operating system was to become the basis for the new operating system for Apple computers. The resignation of Gil Amelio was where the change at Apple really begins. The empty CEO seat helped Jobs obtain an expanded role and eventually become the latest CEO of Apple Inc. Jobs dove in head first and immediately the changes were felt throughout the company. Decisions needed to be made quickly and Steve Jobs was the man to make them in order to turn the company he started around.