How Management Innovation Keeps Ford Moving Ahead:
Every sinceFord MotorCompany's early ears, innvative management has given the company a competitive edge. Ford introduced theModel T in 1980; it quickly became popular, but buiding it was expensive and slow. Because workers brought parts to a chassis remaining in one spot, it took more than 12 hours to put together each car. Henry Ford decided to set up the work differently: The chassis would be pulled along the flor to the parts and the workers. By 1914, the improvements to the moving assembly line had trimmed the assembly time to 93 minutes per car.
But Ford saw more than a production process; he saw a new approach to managing workers. He used the efficiency gained from the asembly line to make working for the company more attractive so that workers would be less likely to quit.He more than doubled wages to $5 per day and shortened the nine hour workday by an hour.He also set u training facilities where workers could learn how to manage their money. Besides improving employee relations, these efforts made ir possible for Ford's workers to become Ford custumers as well.
Years later, the founder's son, Henri Ford II, also Introduced management. During World War II, the need to move people and materials around the worl to win the war fueled the innovation of applying analytic methods to managemnt problems. After the war, Ford bought the creators of the goverment's management information system to his company so that they could apply their methods there. These "whiz kids" atudied Ford's informal record-keeping system and set up formal financal methods and controls to help the company function more efficiently.
Today, Ford technology has enteres the twenty- first century. Under the leadership of Ford's current CEO, Alan Mulally,Ford is using computer technology and analytic tools to predict consumer preferences and precisely schedule production to meet that demand. Mulally also demostrates modern thinking in the way he manages people: He sees his role as creating an envitoment in which everyone focuses on "moving the organization forward." Employees are empowered to act when they see a problem. This includes management negotiating with union representatives to find ways to make facilities work more efficiently rather than simply closing unprofitable operations. In this environment, employees share n the organization's successes. Ford recently reported strong earnings for the year abd announced that employees would receive a record profit- sharing payment of more $8,000 each.
1. Which of the approaches to management discussed in this appendix has each of Ford's CEO's (Henry Ford, Henry Ford II, and Alan Mulally) seemed to emphasize the most in hus work as a manager? Explain.
2. Which of the approaches to management discussed in this appendix has each of Ford's CEO's seemed to emphasize the least in his work as a manager? Explain.
3. Mulally has a reputation as a successful manager. What advice would you give you give him so that he can become an even more successful manager at Ford?