Henry Ford Operations Management

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Henry Ford Operations Management

INTRODUCTION

In 1896, Henry Ford created his first vehicle which he named the Quadricycle, this invention run solely on gas power, which was designed at the back of his home. After failed attempts in 1903 to open a car manufacturing firm, he never gave up and became successful after some few months. The Ford company was opened and the first automobile was produced at a plant in Detroit. Ford Motor company just produced small amounts of vehicles at the initial stages, but this was because cars were hand built everyday by a few workers and the rest of the parts needed to be acquired from other manufacturing firms. In the early stages of 1920, the company began the development of a monstrous mechanical complex along the banks of the River Rouge in Michigan. The plant joined every one of the parts important for auto creation, including a glass manufacturing plant, steel plant and sequential construction system. The stockholders of Ford Motors didn’t like the idea of the complex because of the huge financial burden they would encounter, but Henry Ford who owned 58.5% of the company bought their shares and put his son Edsel in charge as the president of Ford Motors in 1919. Henry Ford returned shortly to run the company after Edsel died. The position was then passed down to Henry Ford II in 1945 who was the grandson of Henry Ford. Henry Ford died two years later at the age of 83 (Editors, 2009).

Operations strategy

An operation strategy is a ploy that shows how a firm would assign resources to its various departments in order to produce goods and services. It is mainly created to maximize effectiveness and efficiency while cutting down on costs at the same time but still producing quality products. In the USA, the use of the just in time strategy is used by most automobile manufacturers which is a strategy that decreases cost of operations and makes raw materials reach when needed at the right time, it was mainly used by the Japanese industry with Toyota being one of the main users of this strategy where Taichi ohno who was the sole designer of Toyotas production system gave recognition to Henry Ford as being the inventor of this production method (shmula, 2007) .Ford Motor company is one of the most successful automobile producers in the world with a steady growth in profit due to visionary leadership and management. Ford Motor company has evolved over the years and they always seek to produce the best quality of goods and services. The automobile industry is very competitive and is always associated with serious problems with other factors like expensive raw materials for production, Strict environment laws and alterations in currency from time to time also causing burdens on manufacturers. Due to this factors it has forced car manufacturers to make alterations to their business and operating strategies, making environmentally friendly vehicles and self- driving cars the main focus of production. Ford Motor company plans to incorporate some of these things into their major operations and to become the worlds trusted firm when it comes to mobility. They would not only make the technology aspect as the main area of focus but they would also make it important to ensure that the passengers’ lives are focused highly when production is being done. Ford Motor company has set that in the year of 2021 they would initiate the production of self- driving cars and make it available for public consumption, by doing this, Ford has partnered with major companies like Lyft, Postmates and Domino’s Pizza to help them with this vision. They also want to decrease heavy traffic in towns by providing traffic management software that would help with movement. Ford plans to attain these goals by cutting down extremely on costs of productions and assigned funds to products that have higher success rates in the consumer market. They have created special teams that focus on inventing quality electric cars for consumers and partnered with Jotye which is a leading Chinese company in the electrical field. They also want to provide a wide range of 40 vehicles in their fleet and make 16 of them electric with about $11 billion dollars being invested into the electric cars project. (Pratap, 2018)

Product and service design

Product design is the procedure of proficient and powerful thought, age and improvement with the objective of making new items. Item configuration incorporates all the building and modern structure work that goes into building up an item from the underlying idea to creation, which guarantees that it works dependably and is financially savvy to produce and looks great. Ford aims to always manufacture cars that are passenger safe, elegant and are of high quality. Ford always uses materials that are quality and have fewer negative impacts upon the environment and have high ranking performance as compared to the former ones.

The materials used for these products are made up of tree cellulose, tomato skin and dandelion roots by using this alternative, ford wants to decrease the carbon footprint. The cars are made up of 75% of metals including steel, magnesium, titanium etc., 17% is made up of plastics, elastomers, textiles and natural materials.4% consist of fuels and consumable liquids with 3% being electronics, ceramics, glass and other compounds, 1% is made up of miscellaneous. Ford products are now putting the safety of their passengers at the highest priority the procedures, devices and offices affirm that the vehicles line up with their own stringent inner rules on wellbeing configuration, just as Ford-indicated dimensions of execution for Public Domain tests, they normally reexamine and refresh these rules from time to time to make sure everything goes according to plan 60% of Ford and Lincoln nameplates in America have a U.S NCAP 5-star overall safety rating,36% of their Ford and Lincoln cars in china have the same rating with 69% in Europe having 5 star ratings. About 40,000 young and new drivers across 41 countries took part in the Ford Driving Skills for life program in 2017 (Ford, 2018)Ford produces cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), as well as Lincoln luxury vehicles. The Company’s vehicle brands are Ford and Lincoln The Company sells its dealerships for retail deal, it additionally pitches vehicles to its dealerships available to be purchased to armada clients, including business armada clients, day by day rental vehicle organizations, and governments. The Company likewise sells parts and embellishments, essentially to its dealerships and to approved parts merchants which thusly fundamentally pitch these items to retailers. The Company likewise offers broadened administration contracts. The Company’s Automotive portion principally incorporates the closeout of Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles, administration parts, and adornments over the world, together with the related expenses to create, fabricate, disseminate, and administration the vehicles, parts and extras. The Company’s Automotive portion incorporates different territorial specialty units, for example, North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. (Reuters, 2019)

Process design

Process design has to take into consideration the fittingness of the procedures that help to achieve organizational goals. It requires a wide perspective of the firm and ought to have a nearsighted viewpoint, this procedures ought to convey client esteem with steady inclusion of the administration. In order to accomplish a decent procedure plan, compelling procedure methodology is required, which manages a solitary details required to make the finished result. Powerful procedure system manages crude material obtainment, client cooperation and innovation venture. (Juneja, 2012). Ford motor company was the first ever automobile company to create a moving assembly line which was created by Henry Ford and his associates hundred years ago. This process made the assembly of vehicles easier by breaking the Model Ts 3000 segments into 84 unmistakable advances performed by gatherings of specialists, as a rope pulled the vehicle undercarriage down the line. The procedure changed the generation and dropped the gathering time for a solitary vehicle from 12 hours to around an hour and a half. By lessening the cash, time and labor expected to manufacture autos as he refined the sequential construction system throughout the years, Ford had the capacity to drop the cost of the Model T from $850 to under $300. Ford as of now is understanding the advantages of cutting-edge producing innovations that will shape what’s to come. For instance, Ford engineers are building up a profoundly adaptable, first-of-its-kind, protected innovation to quickly frame sheet-metal parts for low-volume generation use. The innovation, known as Ford Freeform Fabrication Technology, or F3T, will bring down expenses and speed conveyance times for model stepping molds – inside three business days versus two to a half year for models made utilizing traditional techniques. Moreover, Ford is extending its abilities in 3D printing, which makes creation agent 3D parts layer by layer for testable models. With 3D printing, Ford can make various forms of one section at any given moment and convey model parts to engineers for testing in days as opposed to months. At last, through Ford’s virtual industrial facility the organization can improve quality and cut expenses in genuine assembling offices by making and breaking down PC recreations of the total vehicle creation process. This incorporates recreations of how sequential construction system laborers need to reach and stretch when fabricating a vehicle to guarantee the work conditions satisfy Ford ergonomic guidelines. Since the execution of this virtual procedure in 2001, the quantity of ergonomic issues amid physical forms has been decreased by about 20 percent. (Ford, 2019)

Quality management

Quality management is the demonstration of directing distinctive exercises and undertakings inside an association to guarantee that items and administrations offered, just as the methods used to accomplish them, are predictable. It accomplishes and keeps up an ideal dimension of value inside the association. Quality management is used in organizations to ensure that the people who have interest in the organization and are directly affected by activities of the organization work hand in hand to boost performance in the organization when it comes to matters of products, services and culture which in the long run optimum customer satisfaction would be achieved. Ford Motor company (institute, 2015). In 2018 Ford Motor company issued a recall of their most popular sedans which was the Ford focus. Ford issued the recall of about 1.46 million ford focus cars to fix problems that would result to serious destruction and put human lives in jeopardy. This review was done because it affected almost all ford focus from the 2012 model to the 2018 model which had GDI and GTDI 2-liter engines, when forced realized this problem they immediately put out a statement that cautioned their cherished customers to not fill their tanks to the full capacity. They were all told when filling their tanks, it would be advisable to do it halfway until the problem with the car was solved. This problem came from a flawed canister cleanse valve that if not fixed as soon as possible could end up being stuck in a vacant position which could cause serious distortion to the fuel tank. Ford recalled in total about 1.28 million vehicles in the USA, another 136,000 in Canada and 45,000 Mexico. The organization said that it had not distinguished any accidents associated with the deformity but the cars would be restored free of charge, the specialists were also tasked to reinvent a powertrain module with a totally new programming feature, which would also supplant different parts, including the canister valve. (Bomey, 2018)

Supply chain Management

Supply chain management is the expansive scope of exercises required to plan, control and execute an item’s stream, from procuring crude materials and generation through dispersion to the last consumer, in the most streamlined and financially savvy way that could be available. SCM incorporates the coordinated arranging and execution of procedures required to upgrade the stream of materials, data and money related capital in the zones that comprehensively incorporate interest arranging, sourcing, generation, stock administration and capacity, transportation and return for overabundance or blemished items (Rouse, 2010). Ford Motor company has a very complex material management in terms of the supply chain that was noticed in the recent human rights assessments. Ford Motor company always wants to make it a point to use materials that have been capable in terms of sourcing and are chipping away at various activities to build straightforwardness and duty in crude material sourcing. Ford Motor company is among one of many vehicle manufacturers who are supposed to report on conflict minerals in supply chains which is done through a specialized disclosure report, and as usual Ford came out as the highest rated vehicle manufacturer which includes protection of human rights also. Ford is also starting a project with other automobile producers to start a raw materials observatory which would take care of items relating to moral principles, human right issues and things relating to the environment. The distribution channel of Ford is made up of a retail system of approved retailers but was later abandoned after a few years, ford then created forddirect.com which was created to allude prompts Ford merchants for a charge. 80% of this was owned by the merchants and 20% was owned by Ford itself, they also adopted a smart order framework which would help merchants to give accurate guidance to merchants on vehicles that would sell better which made merchants make tweaks to their stock which would avoid prices from being cut down extremely. By keeping stock and creating massive adjustments to their delivery of goods and services to their consumers everything is solely dependent on the success of the supply chain management. A portion of the Ford Customer Service Division’s reaction has been to modify its association to exploit the carmaker’s worldwide scale, including the utilization of stages crosswise over business sectors and landmasses. For instance, contingent upon the lead designing nation for a specific model, FCSD’s territorial groups connect intimately with generation and obtaining partners to ensure parts are purchased from providers with a view for the whole lifecycle of a vehicle, not simply it gets together. Such arranging is especially critical if provider limit requirements ought to emerge; it tends to be hard to get need for a generally little supply of extra parts contrasted with tremendous requests for vehicles in sequential creation. Added to that measurement is the way that a few providers are likewise serving different OEMs and supporting their very own free brands in the dissemination of reseller’s exchange parts (Ludwig, 2016).

Conclusion

A brief introduction on the company of ford was given, the operation strategy was then explained critically, the product and service design were then shown in the assignment. The process design, quality management and supply chain were also highlighted.

References

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Pratap, A., 2018. [Online] Available at: https://www.cheshnotes.com/2018/09/ford-motors-business-strategy/ [Accessed 2 February 2019].
shmula, 2007. Fords contribution to just in time. [Online] Available at: https://www.shmula.com/fords-contribution-to-just-in-time/371/ [Accessed 2 February 2019].
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