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Car makers' strategy for market share
Keywords:
Product development, Product management, Outsourcing, Market share, Financial performance
Building vehicles for the multitude
True or not, there's a well-known story about Henry Ford saying, when the Model Ts were rolling off the production line, that: "You can have any color you like so long as it's black."
All great, pioneering figures have quotes attributed to them which might or might not be true, and it doesn't really matter too much just so long as they don't obscure the reality of their achievements. Henry Ford is also supposed to have said: "I will build a car for the great multitude" and whether or not he said it, he certainly did it, revolutionizing production techniques as he went along, constantly changing working methods to achieve greater efficiency, as more and more "Tin Lizzies" rolled off the assembly lines to bring car ownership more accessible to the American market, and eventually the world.
A visionary who would be impressed
Henry Ford's name will always be synonymous with the motor car. He was an inspirational leader, an inventor, a visionary, a great businessman and someone who changed people's lives and lifestyles for ever. If he were still around he'd certainly be impressed by today's inventors, innovators, visionaries, inspirational leaders and great businessmen who work for probably the best motor vehicle manufacturer in the world - Toyota.
He'd certainly be interested in Toyota's decision to give individual operatives responsibility for quality control on the production line, and in their commitment to the principal of continuous improvement.
As a man who was responsible for Ford, in the mid 1920s, making 10,000 cars every 24 hours (60 per cent of US total production), he would certainly be fascinated to see the facts and figures that stem from how they do things in the twenty-first century at a company with has 15 factories in Japan and 46 plants in 26 other countries, with huge market share in south-east Asian countries, and expertise in research, development, marketing - and anything you might care to mention that's needed for world dominance of an industry.
Henry Ford would be so impressed by the way they do business at Toyota, and the fact that their vehicles have...