1 Background
Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Fri Mar 04 2005
On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:
1 BACKGROUND 1.1 Ford Motor Company Ford was the pioneer of the motor vehicle, just over 100 years ago. Today, Ford Motor Company is a family of automotive brands consisting of: Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, and Volvo, employing 350,321 (Yahoo Finance) workers in more than 200 countries. 1.2 Motor Industry The American oligopoly in the motor industry, consisting of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, has suffered from poor financial results recently. As reported by www.guardian.co.uk (16/06/03), "the big three US car-makers are wrestling with the combined effects of over-capacity, growing competition from Europe and Japan, huge pension and health care costs, and a damaging increase in incentives to get customers into the showrooms". A real sign that the car industry is in the midst of major change came when www.reuters.com (25/01/04) reported that Toyota had overtaken Ford as the world's second-biggest automobile manufacturer. The Japanese firm's strategy of focusing on quality, efficient manufacturing...


