E28106 V1 MBA600 Assessment 1 Ford Motor PDF

Preview

Summary

this assignment gives more information to guide the student in completing his work...

Description

MBA600 Assessment2 Individual Report on Ford Motor Company

Executive Summary Business analysis is required to identify and determine the position of the business in the market. It helps in the management of business effectively developing the suitable strategies. The present report focused on performing analysis on the business of Ford Motor Company. Various headings are covered effectively in the report including the organizational strategy of Ford Motor, outline the way of the business undertaking its activities, and recommendations to improve the business performance in the future. The strategy of Ford motor discussed the intensive growth strategy combined with generic product differentiation strategy by analyzing how it helped in improving the business performance of Ford. The business activities outlined with a clear explanation including the operations, marketing, product development, innovation, growth, change, strategic mindset, and strategic implementation. The strategic decisions and strategies implemented towards these activities and how these improved are analyzed. The strategies such as SWOT analysis, BCG growth matrix, PESTLE analysis, Porter’s force field analysis, focusing on innovation, balanced scorecard management, quality measures, adopting the latest reporting tools, and regular research on the market are recommended to create more opportunities and increase the business performance in the future.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1 1.

Introduction..............................................................................................................................2

2.

Strategy of Ford Motor.............................................................................................................2

3.

Outline on Way of Business Undertaking................................................................................3

4.

Recommendations to Improve the Performance of Ford Motor..............................................4

5.

Conclusion................................................................................................................................5

References........................................................................................................................................6

1. Introduction Development of strategic knowledge is important for a business to understand the operations and marketing activities. It helps in understanding and analyzing the strategies of a firm implementing to perform the business operations. It is achieved by performing analysis on a firm to know its strategies and activities to determine how well it is doing its business. Innovation and growth are important factors in improving the competitive advantage. A business requires the identification of the ways to enhance growth and innovation by enforcing the continuous learning and research to gather the data. Data analysis performed on business helps in analyzing the customers and supporting the management in making the decisions. It helps in implementing a change to meet business demands. Ford Motor is the vehicle manufacturing company changing the lives of the people. It manufactures and sells technologically advanced and innovative vehicles. It is established in 1919 in Delaware. Ford has an overall 199,000 employees globally. It produces cars, sports vehicles, trucks, luxury vehicles, and electric vehicles. It has mainly three business segments including the Ford Credit, mobility, and automotive. Ford focuses on wholesale and retail sales to generate revenues. It is a highly competitive firm in the United States in manufacturing and selling the automotive[ CITATION For182 \l 1033 ]. The main aim of the present report is to the identification of the strategy of the Ford Motor company and way of how it conducting its business activities and facilitating the recommendations to identify the opportunities to increase the business performance. The key activities analyzed in the present report include operations, marketing, innovation, product development, growth, change, strategic mindset, and strategy implementation. This reports accurately articles the business model and organization’s strategy and outlining the details related to the business activities. 2. The strategy of Ford Motor Ford Motor follows the different type of business strategies to perform its operations effectively. The main strategy implemented by Ford includes a growth strategy. It is combined with Porter’s generic strategy of differentiation to achieve the desired results. These two strategies are clearly described below. Intensive Growth strategy: The growth strategy of a company majorly focuses on the various aspects of the business including the adding the new products to product and service portfolio,

increasing the size of the area serving the target customers, acquiring the target competitors and merging with growing companies, and enhancement of sales of the current products. These are exactly following by Ford to achieve the desired growth of the business. The product portfolio of Ford includes trucks, performance vehicles, cars, electrics, future vehicles, fleet vehicles, SUVs, and commercial vehicles in different models. It is going to release the three new cars such as Escape, Super Duty, and Transit by 2020[ CITATION For192 \l 1033 ]. It is also providing financing service to buy the vehicles manufactured by it. To increase the target market size, Ford developing a different marketing mix for different customer segments. It is helping in fulfilling the needs of the various customers by manufacturing sports cars, economy cars, luxury cars, and station wagons and assessing its strengths and utilizing opportunities to business expansion. Ford focusing on market development and market penetration to enhance more sales from the current products. It increased the dealerships to enhance sales and shown differentiation in generating more revenues. Ford performing mergers and acquisitions with various companies such as Quantum Signal, Volvo Cars Group, Breeze, Lincoln Motors, and Automobile Craiova. It also acquired the Transloc and Autonomic to grab the talented people for mobility projects and improve the mobility services through cloud respectively[ CITATION And18 \l 1033 ]. The acquisition helped in addressing the competition from GM. Porter’s Differentiation Strategy: Ford moved to Porter’s generic strategy of differentiation to gain a competitive advantage over GM Company and Toyota. This strategy helps Ford company in focusing on the product innovation. Product differentiation helps the company in adding unique value and offering the low-cost products to the customers. It driving the Fords to invest a lot in mobility to develop commercially viable vehicles. It helps in gaining the advantages from the price differentiation and vertical integration of business. Communication and marketing channels are utilizing in promoting the differentiation and features of the vehicles already manufactured and newly manufactured. Trust towards the brand name is improved and gained benefits in the long-run[ CITATION EKV14 \l 1033 ]. This business strategy led Ford to the development of driverless vehicles that operate in an urban environment, smart cars with high fuel efficiency, and vehicles operating with electricity. It further helped in increasing market share.

3. Outline on Way of Business Undertaking Operations: To ensure success in performing the operations, Ford built close associations with its suppliers and concentrating on the problems like climate change to enhance environmental performance. It has offices and plants throughout the world and performing mainly 10 operations including the human resource development, inventory management, manufacturing the vehicles, goods and services design, quality management, capacity and process design, location strategy, supply chain management, layout designing, scheduling the production, and vehicle maintenance[ CITATION Dan17 \l 1033 ]. These operations are helping the company to increase its productivity. Marketing: Marketing incentives plans and programs are created by Ford to increase the vehicles. It offering incentives on the vehicles sold to increase the market share. It accurately implementing the marketing mix elements such as product, place, promotion, and price to attract the customers to purchase the vehicles. Competitive pricing is offering giving discounts on the vehicles to maintain the same production levels and market share. Ford placed the manufacturing plants in six continents to have dealers in every country. It is building long terms relationships with customers and participating in various sports events to promote their brands. Ford gave the best products like SUV, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo to add value to the customers. Product Development: Ford always focuses on new product development to manufacturing vehicles with innovation. For product development, it is following the intensive growth strategy. This strategy is associated with the development of the new products and services to boost the revenues for Ford. This strategy has been implementing through investing a lot of funds into the R and D department[ CITATION Pau171 \l 1033 ]. It is helping Ford in manufacturing electric cars to gain the competitive advantage and growth of business and showing differentiation in offering products to the customers. Innovation: Ford has been established as a process for gathering innovative ideas about the engineering process and submitting them. It established the Ford Consumer Innovation Office and receiving a number of ideas from the consumers every year on various topics. It follows the principles of Henry Ford’s and opened a research and innovation center in the location of Palo Alto. Ford aimed to create smart mobility by investing a lot into the design, develop, and grow

the mobility technologies[ CITATION For19 \l 1033 ]. With this strategy, the company is moving fast in the mobility manufacturing industry. Growth: It is expected that Ford motor will grow at a moderate rate due to changes in the customer preferences in its biggest market of North America. It generates 60% of revenue from this target segment. The sales of Sedan variants are declining and negatively affecting on company revenues. It is anticipated that there will be a 1% decline in revenue[ CITATION Nas19 \l 1033 ]. Analysts expected the annual average growth rate of Ford in the five years is at 7.3%. There are chances to experience financial problems with an increase in interest rates and weak performance due to changes in the market conditions. Change: A systematic change is facilitated at Ford to improve the processes, human resources, and facilities. First the change is reflected in the leadership styles of leaders to ensure necessary improvements to the system[ CITATION GRo16 \l 1033 ]. The changes are documented properly to use them in the future. Ford implements three types of change such as a change to the roles of employees, office space or manufacturing plants space, and changes in the operations when it experience critical situations. Strategic Mindset: Ford will be always with the strategic mindset to promote forward-thinking to enhance innovation. It has clear vision, mission, goals, and objectives and oriented towards the future by showing differentiation and reflecting its abilities in fulfilling the needs of the customers[ CITATION Pra15 \l 1033 ]. It is constantly changing its strategies towards the employees, suppliers, community, government, customers, and creditors to align with the projects undertaken. Implementation: Ford implementing the issue-specific strategies by formulating them towards the enhancement of business sustainability. It developed and implemented a different type of strategies such as the climate change strategy, renewable energy strategy, circular economy strategy, human rights strategy, and sustainable materials strategy. It is allocating resources appropriately to the accomplishment of the strategies[ CITATION For191 \l 1033 ]. These strategies are supporting a lot of Ford in performing its business activities effectively and increasing business sustainability.

4. Recommendations to Improve the Performance of Ford Motor Ford requires to focus on the several areas that require improvements. It needs to identify those areas to determine the opportunities to enhance the performance of the company in the future. The following are several recommendations to Ford Motor Company to improve the business performance in various ways. 

Ford requires to conduct the SWOT analysis regularly to analyze the strengths and opportunities and weaknesses and threats to maintain its position in the market by developing the new products, adoption of the technologies that are fuel-efficient and sustainable, focusing the research and development for new product ideas, and recovering immediately from the unexpected situations.



It needs to regular performing of the PESTLE analysis to understand the changes in the factors and external market trends impacting the automotive and financing business of Ford. It helps in the identification of the factors changing such as economy, political, technological, social,

legal,

and

environmental

that

negatively

impacting

the

manufacturing

operations[ CITATION Whe11 \l 1033 ]. 

The factors changing the structure of the automotive are very crucial to business success. These are analyzed by evaluating the porter’s five forces such as the bargaining abilities of customers, bargaining capabilities of suppliers, risks of alternative products and degree of competition, and new firms entering into the market[ CITATION Tan13 \l 1033 ].



Continuous evaluation needs to be performed on the market to address the competition and decreasing demand for SUVs in the United States. The different type of consumer segments requires to be evaluated such as retail customers, commercial and business vehicle users, mobility consumers, and fleet consumers to analyze the changes in their preferences and needs



Innovation must be focused by Ford by analyzing the needs of the customers applying the different tools and techniques such as the product differentiation, BCG matrix model, product safety and quality, customer satisfaction, and Things Gone Wrong performance measure. Global product development system needs to be created for launching the fuel-efficient vehicles



Integrity must be maintained and improved in the supply chain management to link effectively the supply chain processes, supply chain components, and network structure of

the supply chain. It needs to maintain robust and long-lasting relationships by categorizing them into tier1, tier2, tier3, and tier4 suppliers[ CITATION Har18 \l 1033 ]. 

The reporting tools adopted and using by Ford such as quality measurements and balanced scorecard management used by making required improvements to fit with the competitive world. It needs to adopt the latest techniques of Six Sigma to the reduction of the costs incurred in producing the products and eliminating the waste to reduce the impact on the environment.



Qualitative and quantitative research to gather the data to understand the problems and realities presented for the Ford Company. Quantitative research should be focused on marketing, organization, and financial growth. Qualitative research should be performed to analyze the past reports to analyze business performance.



Ford requires to extract the opportunities from the developing countries to produce economic vehicles. It needs to strengthen the business presence in the market by analyzing the reasons for customer changes in preferences and gathering their feedback. Improvement of customer relationships, focusing on fuel efficiency and safety, and increase in the R and D spending. 5. Conclusion

Business analysis is the crucial activity helps a firm in understanding its way of doing and improving the knowledge from the experience. This requires the conducting of a lot of research and data analysis to understand the current strategic position of a business in the market. The report is developed on Ford motor company by analyzing its business operations in various aspects. The organizational strategies implemented by Ford include intensive growth strategy and porter’s generic product differentiation strategy. The growth strategy explained clearly by identifying the four aspects focused by it including the market size, sales enhancement, mergers and acquisitions and product range and benefits of a differentiation strategy. The present report covered effectively the various concepts of business management including the operations, innovation, growth, marketing, strategic mindset, product development, change, and strategy implementation. These are explained clearly by performing extensive research on the company and analyzing its strategies. The recommendations are provided effectively to enhance business performance in the future. Those include SWOT analysis, BCG growth matrix, PESTLE analysis, Porter’s force field analysis, focusing on innovation, balanced scorecard management,

quality measures, adopting the latest reporting tools, and regular research on the market. These are helpful in analyzing the status and progress of the business effectively. References Ford Motor, 2018. Annual Report on Form 10-K, Delaware: Ford Motor. Ford

Motor,

Available

2019.

at:

All

Vehicles.

[Online]

https://shop.ford.com/showroom/?gnav=header-all-vehicles#/

[Accessed 06 September 2019]. Ford

Motor,

2019.

Ford

Motor

Company.

[Online]

Available at: https://corporate.ford.com/content/ford-corporate/en/innovation/innovation-ideassubmission.html [Accessed 06 September 2019]. Ford Motors, 2019. Sustainability Report 2018/19, USA: Ford Motors. Hawkins, A. J., 2018. Ford expands its mobility empire with a couple of acquisitions. [Online] Available

at:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/25/16932868/ford-autonomic-transloc-

acquistion-mobility [Accessed 06 September 2019]. Kaur, H., Singh, C. D. & Singh, R., 2018 . Achieving Excellence through Green Supply Chain Management in Manufacturing Industries. s.l.:BookRix. Kissinger, D., 2017. Ford Motor Company Operations Management, 10 Decisions, Productivity. [Online] Available

at:

http://panmore.com/ford-motor-company-operations-management-10-decisions-

areas-productivity [Accessed 06 September 2019]. Meyer, P., 2017. Ford Motor Company: Generic & Intensive Growth Strategies. [Online] Available

at:

http://panmore.com/ford-motor-company-generic-intensive-growth-strategies

[Accessed 05 September 2019].

Nasdaq, 2019. Ford Motor Company Analyst Forecasts Earnings Growth. [Online] Available

at:

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/f/earnings-growth

[Accessed 06 September 2019]. Prasad, K., 2015. Strategic Management: Text And Cases. 2nd ed. Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.. Rachapila, T. & Jansirisak, S., 2013. Using Porter’s Five Forces Model for Analysing the Competitive Environment of Thailand’s Sweet Corn Industry. International Journal of Business and Social Research, 3(3), pp. 174-184. Roth, G. & DiBella, A., 2016. Systemic Change Management: The Five Capabilities for Improving Enterprises. New York: Springer. Valentin, E., 2014. Business Planning and Market Strategy. New Delhi...