Менеджеры и менеджмент (Executives and Management). Коломейцева Е.М - 36 стр.

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210
Haig Simonian on two car groups' different routes to the global market Rising costs and the worldwide spread of
shared tastes in car styling have prompted the industry's giants to exploit global
5 economies of scale. But rivals such as Ford and Honda have approached the task very differently. Ford is one of the
world's earli-
10 est multinationals. Its first foreign production unit was set up in Canada in 1904 – just a year after the creation of
the US parent. For years Ford operated on a regional
15 basis. Individual countries or areas had a large degree of auton omy from the US headquarters. That meant prod-
ucts differed sharply, depending on local execu-
20 tives' views of regional require ments. In Europe the company built different cars in the UK and Germany until the
late 1960s. Honda, by contrast, is a much
25 younger company, which grew rapidly from making motorcycles in the 1950s. In contrast to Ford, Honda was run
very firmly out of Japan. Until well into the 1980s, its
30 vehicles were designed, engineered andbuilt in Japan for sale around the world.Significantly, however, Honda
tended to be more flexible than
35 Ford in developing new products. Rather than having a structure based on independent functional departments,
such as bodywork or engines, all Japan's car makers
40 preferred multi-disciplinary teams. That allowed development work to take place simultaneously, rather than be-
ing passed between departments. It also allowed much
45 greater responsiveness to change. In the 1990s both companies started to amend their organisational structures to
exploit the perceived strengths of the other. At
50 Ford. Alex Trotman, the newly appointed chairman, tore up the company's rulebook in 1993 to create a new organi-
sation. The Ford 2000 restructuring pro-
55 gramme threw out the old functional departments and replaced them with multi-disciplinary product teams. The
teams were based on five (now three) vehicle centres, responsible for different types of vehicles. Small and medium-sized
cars, for example, are handled by a European team split between the
65 UK and Germany. The development teams comprise staff from many backgrounds. Each takes charge of one area
of the process, whether technical, financial or
70 marketing-based. Honda, by contrast, has decentralised in recent years. While its cars have much the same names
around the world, they are becom
75 ing less, rather than more, standardised. 'Glocalisation1 – a global strategy with local management -is the watch-
word. Eventually the group expects its structure will
80 comprise four regions – Japan, the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific – which will become increasingly self-
sufficient. Two reasons explain Honda's
85 new approach. Shifting to production overseas in the past decade has made the company more attuned
to regional tastes. About lm of Honda's 2.1m worldwide car
90 sales last year were produced in the US. A further 104,000 were made in the UK. No other manufacturer has such
a high proportion of foreign output.
95 Honda engineers also reckon they can now devise basic engineering structures which are common enough to al-
low significant economies of scale, but sufficient-
100 ly flexible to be altered to suit regional variations. The US Accord, for example, is longer and wider than the
Japanese version. The European one may have the
105 same dimensions as the Japanese model, but has different styling and suspension settings. Both Ford and Honda
argue their new structures represent a
110 correct response to the demands of the global market. Much of what they have done is similar, but intriguingly, a
lot remains different
FINANCIAL TIMES
World business newspaper.
T a s k 15.
A. Understanding main points
1. Read the text about two car companies' global strategies and say which of these statements apply to Ford and
which to Honda.

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