Ford Motor Company :: Business Management Marketing Essays

ford Motor familiarity is the worlds largest producer of trucks, and the secondlargest producer of cars and trucks combined. hybridizing has manufacturing, assemblyor sales affiliates in 34 countries and fording companies employed 337,800 peopleworld-wide in 1996.Ford has manufacturing facilities in 22 countries on 5 continents, with 87plants in North America and 41 in Europe. In Europe, in 1995, Fords combinedfomite market share, at 12.2%, was the highest for eleven years, with three ofthe eight popular cars. In 1995, in the United States, five of the ten top-selling vehicles were Ford, including the best-selling car (Ford Taurus) andbest-selling truck (F-series).On January 1, 1995, Ford merged its North American Automotive Operations and itsEuropean Automotive Operations into a single organization, Ford AutomotiveOperations. Instead of being organized by geographic regions, the Company is nowrealigned by product line, with five Vehicle Centers, each responsible for onegroup of products worldwide. At the same time, Ford is reducing the time interpretedto develop a new vehicle from 48 to 24 months and reducing engines,transmissions, and basic vehicle platforms by 30% worldwide. Ford hopes that bypooling global skills and resources depart result in more variations on eachvehicle platform, increasing the number of vehicles introduced all over the nextfive years by 50%. genius of the key strategies behind the realignment has been growth. Ford haslaunched a variety of new initiatives throughout the world, with joint take a chancesfor the assembly of vehicles in countries as diverse as China, India, Thailandand Vietnam. In China, Ford expects to begin production of light trucks with acompany named Jiangling Motors in the near future. In India, Mahindra Ford IndiaLtd. will begin manufacture and distribution of Ford products, seed withthe Ford Escort, in mid-1996 and Fiesta in 1998. In Thailand, Ford has a jointventure to produce pick-up trucks and in Vietnam , Ford plans to build a vehicleassembly plant at Hanoi, together with partners Song Cong Diesel. In Poland, thePlonsk plant has begun to build Escorts and Transits.Joint ventures are establishing a presence for Ford all over the globe. Ford isworking with two companies in Korea, one to supply automotive air conditioningunits and the second as a new joint venture to produce electronic componentslater this year. In addition to the 20% of Jiangling Motors, China, acquired byFord in 1995, four further manufacturing joint ventures in China fill been setup to produce radiators, glass, plastic and electronic components. Ford has alsoacquired a 45% equity in South African company, Samcor, for the assembly of Ford