...Case 34 General Motors What are key forces in the general and industry environments that affect the U.S. auto industry, and General Motors? General Motors (GM) has suffered different threats and difficulties that have put in risk the continuity of its production. Before the year 2000, GM has been going through different production, financial, and development problems. Wagoner has tried in different ways to address each problem in order to make GM more successful. Unfortunately GM had high losses that have made it very difficult to solve those problems. All this is due to a very competitive environment in each there were different forces that affect the development of the firm. According to Porter’s Five-Forces Model of the Industry, there are five aspects to analyze, the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of substitute products and services, and the intensity of rivalry among competitors in an industry. First, the threat of new entrants highly affected the firm. GM has so many divisions and units which made the firm weak in its integration. GM had 27 different units within the firm that purchase parts that made it difficult to achieve economies of scale. All those units worked independently and do not contribute each other. In other to solve that, Wagoner started working to integrate each unit, especially overseas. Also, he took the decision to reduce the number of units and divisions which...
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...General Motors Case Study Paper The main problem that General Motors was facing was declining market shares and a changing industry, General Motors (GM) launched an ambitious effort that transformed its supply chain and made customer satisfaction a priority (Cohen & Roussel, 2005). In the late 1990s, the Internet seemed poised to transform the automobile industry. Consumers armed with information could quickly compare prices, options, quality, and service—and make more informed choices. General Motors observed these changes warily. By the late 1990s the need for change was becoming clear. Consumers were more savvy, powerful, and demanding. Yet GM's responsiveness lagged the industry (Cohen & Roussel, 2005). Dealers grew increasingly frustrated by the mix of inventory foisted on them. Even in key markets, dealer lots were clogged with over 100 days of supply. To clear out slow-moving products, GM had to offer sales incentives, which squeezed profit margins (Cohen & Roussel, 2005) Dealers couldn't get the vehicles they wanted—the vehicles their customers wanted. Desirable options such as aluminum wheels, leather interiors, and V8 engines often were not available in adequate quantities. Unavailable options, or constraints, were high at GM dealerships relative to the industry as whole, averaging tens of thousands of orders affected at any given time over the range of GM products (Cohen & Roussel, 2005). Patrons who chose to special-order a vehicle...
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...Organization and Management – Assignment 1 I. Information General Motors (GM) was one of the market leaders in automobile production prior to the 1980s and 1990s. Under the supervision of Alfred P. Sloan Jr., GM developed 5 independent divisions that marketed their own line of cars. These divisions – Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac – catered to different economic price ranges. This organizational design led to GM being the world’s largest manufacturing organization during the post-World War II era. However, during the 1980s, GM experienced its first loss since 1921. The newly appointed CEO Roger Smith began redesigning GM’s organizational structure to push decision making down to the operational level instead of the management level. He created two different groups, the BOC – composed of the Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac divisions, and the CPC – from the Chevrolet, Pontiac and GM of Canada. Each group had complete authority to organize whichever way they wanted and to do what was necessary to bring GM back into a good economic status. The BOC group organized four independent strategic business units, which was reminiscent of the previous organizational structure of GM. The CPC group on the other hand, moved towards the traditional centralized organizational structure. Upon the appointment of Jack Smith as CEO of GM in 1993, he carried out what would seem as harsh measures for GM. He eliminated a lot of staff by combining different...
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...The directors of Toyota Motors India were held responsible for the dead of one individual when the airbags in his car did not work. The case was dropped only after the company agreed to compensate the family of the deceased. Not only can lawsuits be filed against the directors by outsiders, it can be filed by the company itself and even the shareholders. A shareholder lawsuit was filed against General Motors that alleged the board of directors did not perform its duty in preventing the mounting losses from the sale of vehicles with faulty and deadly ignition switches. In Iredand a legal action against four former directors of the Irish Nationwide Building Society had to be settled out of court. This was done when a group of shareholders accused the directors for the loss incurred by the company due to the non profitable investments made by the board. In India , when a bus belonging to Orbit Transportation Company was involved in a hit and run case , the opposition parties demanded the removal and arrest of the Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab who happened to be a director of the...
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...General Motors China It seems General Motors has been able to successfully come out of a difficult patch of declining sales that continued through most part of the year 2015 in China. The last two reported months i.e. October and November have given GM China reason to smile as the combined retail deliveries rose 15 % and 14 % year on year respectively. In the nine months through September 2015, General Motors and its joint ventures sold a total of 2,492,428 vehicles in China at an average of 276,936 vehicles per month. But in October the sales figure was up at 327,037 and in November it was 346,671. During the first 11 months of 2015, retail sales by GM and its joint ventures in China increased 4.1 % on an annual basis to a record 3,166,791...
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...Established in 1908, General Motors (GM), with its headquarters based in Detroit, Michigan was one of the world's largest automakers in the world. Their business operate in 140 countries with an employment of 204000 people, and together with their strategic allies, they produce cars and trucks in 34 countries (General Motors, 2010). However, in June 2009, GM filed for bankruptcy protection and reach out to U.S government for financial assistance (Taylor III, 2009). In this essay, a look will be taken at the nature of GM’s organizational structure such as its organizational design and how GM’s operation is conceptualized, as well as its existence as an organization. How GM and the environment affect each other will be discussed too. GM was born out as a conglomerate of firms (Bordenave & Lung 2003). From a multinational organization with a headquarter set in Detroit and unified products, design and manufacturing resources throughout its field of business, GM was quick in moving itself out to become a global organization whereby they valued diversity and flexibility to match with the changing pattern of opportunities and threats posed in the industry sector. They actually diverged from Ford’s monolithic structure, gained own corporate stability and shortly after, challenge Ford’s hegemony internally and globally (Bordenave & Lung 2003). A division of labour is set up, whereby production has been divided into different skills and tasks spread across countries (Hatch & Cunliffe...
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...General Motors Sample Case Study Next Generation C hevrolet Instructions You have 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete the case below, which involves building an Excel model and preparing a written memo. You will walk through your analysis as part of the interview process. The GM team will ensure your case material makes its way to the proper interview room. By the end of the allotted time, you should: Write a memo in Word no longer than one page outlining your analysis of the case problem and your recommendation Be prepared to walk your interviewers through your Excel model and present your recommendation (you can use either the Excel or the Word document as back up for your discussion; no need to prepare a Powerpoint presentation).The discussion of the case with Q &A will take approxi mately 30 minutes. Type your name in top left corner of both the E xcel and Word document Save the E xcel and Word document on your desktop with the following name: C ase Background It is January 2010 and General Motors is considering the development of the next generation full-size family sedan. ,a Full-size sedans are a mainstay in the American market. According to the US government classification, a fullAdoption of the term necessitated by an increasingly larger variability of car sizes and body styles. Full-size sedan segment size fluctuated significantly over the last 50 years. sales negatively, and so did the introduction of many other family, such...
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...In addition to the three case studies, Nivedita Swaroop Cawand conducted a comparative study between children using an adaptive seating device during therapy sessions, and those who did not. This study focused on the impact of including the newly designed adaptive seating device, known as the D chair, during occupational therapy sessions for children with Down syndrome (Cawand, 2014). The D chair was redesigned to provide comfort and proximal stability at the child’s trunk, allowing the child to focus on developing fine motor skills (Cawand, 2014). Twenty-eight children were evenly split into an experimental group and a control group; the main focus of both groups focused on improving fine motor skills. The fourteen children in the experimental...
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...FORD MOTORS * Background Ford motor company is an American multinational automaker; headquarter in Dearborn, Michigan, basically in Detroit. Founded by Henry Ford in the year 1903, company products are automobiles; the commercial ones are fords name and the luxury ones under Lincoln, both brands under the same company. Ford Company have participation in the market share stock of New York, also has contribution over Mazda and Aston Martin, Japan and UK respectively. Being the second largest automaker enterprise in the US and the fifth in the globe, Ford has global revenues of $118.3 billion, by the year 2008. Manufacturing 5.532 million vehicles and manage over 213.000 employees in 90 plants and facilities around the globe. For a certain period Ford manufacture a line of trucks, bus and tractors. The company discontinued from their products within market only focusing in commercial vehicles. Ford manufacturing methods had a huge impact on the culture and the concept of ensemble cars, “Fordism” was the popular name for those techniques, an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences classified by moving assembly lines, was basically the concept of Fordism, know by the year 1914 worldwide. Ford used to be the manager of Mercury luxury brand for the US market, the company discontinued form market in the year 2011. Ford also acquired some subsidiaries over the years, like Jaguar and Land Rover for example, before being sold to Tata motors...
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...Ford vs Dell Executive Summary FORDs current method of controlling all aspects of the manufacturing is outdated and is limiting the corporation’s annual results. In order to stay competitive and become efficient again, FORD needs to re-evaluate their current supply chain and implement key portions of DELLs vertically integrated supply chain model. A proper implementation will increase information flow between suppliers, departments and dealers resulting in a reduction of redundant inventory and focus towards just in time inventory. All of these factors will further drive up the already US industry leading profit margin per vehicle. In order to accomplish these goals FORD needs to refocus the Purchasing department’s responsibilities, consolidate and develop suppliers that deliver finished high level components and increase the information flow across all points of the supply chain. These steps will help to introduce a more pull-based system. Contents Issue identification 1 Environmental and root cause analysis 2 Alternatives/Options 3 Recommendations 4 Implementation 5 Monitor & Control 6 Issue identification • Current order to delivery (OTD) is more than 60 days. • Management of large supplier network. • Utilization of IT is lacking. • Purchasing isn’t integrated into Product development. • Independent dealership network has resulted in FORDs loss of control over customer service experiences. This network also...
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...Toyota Motors Case Study Introduction Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the world largest automobile manufacturing. They have manufacturing plant throughout the world. Toyota has thirteen manufacturing plants in North American alone. One of its largest plants is here in the Georgetown, Kentucky where they produce the new Camry. Toyota is poised to overtake General Motors and become the largest car manufacturer in the world. Much of this success can be attributed to the renowned Toyota Production System (TPS). This system is one of the most admired lean manufacturing systems in existence and is constantly used in operational management text books as an example of how important operational management is to an organization. The main objectives to the TPS are to design out overburden and inconsistence, and to eliminate waste. Toyota has spent millions of dollars to bring over this system and implement here in its North American manufacturing plants. In our case we focus on the breakdown of this system that allows a small issue in seat installation to turn into a large problem that is slowing down production. Car production has dropped from run ratio of 85% to a run ratio of 95% in only one month. The run ratio measures the number of cars actually assembled in proportion to the number of cars that could have been assembled with no line stoppages. Along with the slowdown in production no one can put their finger on what is causing this and why there is a breakdown in the otherwise...
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...Raju Sharma COMPARING AND ANALYZING FINANCIAL STATEMENTS TO MAKE AN INVESTMENT DECISION Case Study of Automotive Industry Business Economics and Tourism 2012 1 VAASAN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES Bachelor of Business Administration ABSTRACT Author Title Raju Sharma Comparing and Analyzing Financial Statements to Make an Investment Decision: Case Study of Automotive Industry. Year 2012 Language English Pages 72 + 5 Appendices Name of Supervisor Jukka Paldanius The purpose of the thesis was to evaluate and compare the financial statements of different companies to rate their performances. The emphasis was to be able to choose among several companies the best one to invest in. The aim of the study was met by comparing the risk of different companies, their rate of return, future trends and their strengths and weaknesses. In the theoretical section of the thesis different factors affecting the capital market were discussed, with the focus being on the risks of an investment. Basic financial statements and ratios were discussed briefly. Next cross sectional and time series techniques to compare the financial statements and ratios were revealed. Most of the information from the theories was later on used in the empirical part of the thesis. In the empirical study, initially the financial statements of different companies were taken to compute the ratios, risk, average return, to make trends and common size statements. Then a quantitative interpretation...
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...Managing Talent: General Motors’ Commitment to Diversity Sophia Laing Kaplan University Mt203: Human Resources Management – 02 Dr Dana Williams January 20, 2014 General Motors the automobile giant had problems within its’ company where equal employment opportunities (EEO) were not practised. This resulted in the women and the minorities making complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) about the disparate treatment that they encounter and the need for something to be done. Such discrimination was evident in the 1980’s and as a result of the complaints, a settlement of $42.4 million dollars was reached between the EEOC and General Motors. Complying with the rules of the EEOC meant that General Motors would therefore place more emphasis and value on promoting diversity within its company thereby eliminating any form of discrimination. The EEOC is responsible for enforcing most of the EEO laws, (Gerhart, Hollenbeck, et.al, 2009). Question 1. Of the activities and accomplishments described in this case, which does General Motors need to do in order to meet legal requirements? Which go beyond legal requirements? General Motors took a step in the right direction when they presented more opportunities for women and minorities. Legally, their only legal obligation is not to discriminate based on an individual’s sex, color, race, religion, and national origin (Gerhart, Hollenbeck, et.al, 2009). Did they have to promote so many women executives? No, they...
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...IRAC Method of Case Study Analysis Nsima Etok and Christopher Dunbar Business Law 531 March 31 2015 Gregory Martins Introduction In any type of business, whether it is partnership, Limited Liability Company (LLC) and or a Corporation, these are seen as different types of businesses that involves one, two or more People. The same is implied to businesses that are operated internationally between different Companies and Organizations across the globe which deals with either importing or exporting of products or other items of trade. It is therefore necessary that in this type of business, all the parties involved have to look into so many factors as will be analyzed in this paper from demographic, security, culture and values and other related issues which are more relevant to the smooth operation of the business and not forgetting the legal consequences from the business which is very paramount. Abstract With the increasing focus on globalization form(s) and companies operating their network of business activities across the globe, There are issues to be considered while dealing with those things that helps in streamlining how any business can operate effectively. Some of these are: Economy, Environment, Ethics, Social. It is obvious that when engaging in international business, the different parties must look into the merits and de-merits of their business operation and the overall impact on the business. (Thinkingbookwom...
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...General Motors Case Study Case 34 General Motors What are key forces in the general and industry environments that affect the U.S. auto industry, and General Motors? General Motors (GM) has suffered different threats and difficulties that have put in risk the continuity of its production. Before the year 2000, GM has been going through different production, financial, and development problems. Wagoner has tried in different ways to address each problem in order to make GM more successful. Unfortunately GM had high losses that have made it very difficult to solve those problems. All this is due to a very competitive environment in each there were different forces that affect the development of the firm. According to Porter’s Five-Forces Model of the Industry, there are five aspects to analyze, the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of substitute products and services, and the intensity of rivalry among competitors in an industry. First, the threat of new entrants highly affected the firm. GM has so many divisions and units which made the firm weak in its integration. GM had 27 different units within the firm that purchase parts that made it difficult to achieve economies of scale. All those units worked independently and do not contribute each other. In other to solve that, Wagoner started working to integrate each unit, especially overseas. Also, he took the decision to reduce the number...
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