Essays on Henry Ford

Teamwork – Introduction

The definition of Teamwork differs from one organization or business to other or may be even from one individual to another. This difficulty in defining teamwork essentially is because of the numerous facets that it comprises of. Teams are made when people having a common taste, liking, and attitude come forward as a group and work for accomplishment of an overall common goal. The role that teams play within an organization is very important.

According to Henry Ford,

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success-Henry Ford.” Work organization with the help of teamwork can denote numerous possibilities, ...

Question one

The Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award is awarded based on specific criteria. Seven important aspects, which include; leadership, customer focus, operations focus, strategic planning, workforce focus, results and measurement, analysis and knowledge management of an organization are evaluated. Back in 2008 I worked for the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC). Based on its management and the performance, ARDEC would definitely qualify for the MBNQA award (Wine, 65).

Question two

ARDEC qualified for the MBNQA award back in the year 2007. This was a historical award that made the first defense department to be accorded an MBNQA award. ARDEC ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, ends by describing a “something commensurate to his (humanity’s) capacity for wonder.” (Fitzgerald, 189) Taking place in the 20th Century, there was a trend in American culture and as a result literature to explore the human need and capacity to dream for something more, something greater than current circumstance. That “something commensurate” appears necessary for a man’s happiness while at the same time is capable of leading to his downfall and misery. The United States at the time that The Great Gatsby takes place was drowning in unprecedented wealth. (BBC). Many pursued ...

This is a book review, Fordlandia: the rise and fall of Henry Ford’s forgotten jungle city, written by Professor Greg Grandin. It talks about how Henry Ford built the American city in South America, Amazon, for rubber trees Grandin (2010). Ford needed rubber for cars production; it was the only suitable place in South America. He was looking for a place which looked like the American cities; with good streets and water to drink Watts(2005). The people there did not like how Henry Ford did his business and paid wages, so they developed a certain habit Raff and Summers (1987). ...

Introduction

The terms Fordism and Taylorism are useful in describing management, and the application of these theories to contemporary issues in business organizations. The two theories have practical implications to various complicated situations that can have dramatic effects on the business organization. Fordism comes from the renowned scientist Henry Ford who came up with the technical division of labor where companies and production units divided labor amongst itself to increase productivity. This form of management entailed a hierarchical control where employees in the production units had to work in one specialized unit of production. The workers were not skilled and produced, ...

Introduction

The automobile industry in the US is one of the largest in the world. The history of the automobile industry dates back to the 1890’s. Since its start it has undergone massive evolution to become the largest in the world. This is attributed to the large size of market available domestically. It is also successful due to the use of mass production. Until 1980, the U.S. was the largest producer of automobiles. It was dethroned by Japan in 1980. This was followed by the subsequent overtaking by the Chinese automobile industry in 2008 though this is greatly attributed ...

Introduction

Life without cars in the modern world seems to be nearly impossible. Without cars, there would have been inefficiency and time wastage in the movement of people and goods from one point to another. However, one man contributed to the revolution of the transport system; Henry Ford. Ford is renowned for changing the lifestyle of the Americans the production system in the 1900’s by inventing some of the first automobiles. Furthermore, he made the cost of owning cars much more affordable for the average American citizen. This was made possible by the invention of a mass production assembling for ...

Personal Statement

- Malcolm X Though Malcolm X is very controversial figure in the history of twenty-first century, I think no one will argue about his words on education. What is more, from Socrates to Shakespeare, Plutarch to Albert Einstein, Aristotle to Henry Ford, prominent minds of human kind stressed the importance of education. Their words still linger nowadays, because education, in one way or another, will always be important for personal growth and open-mindness, a mean to succeed and build your life, and become a valuable for both oneself and the society. Nevertheless, the complete understanding of it came to ...

Introduction:

When Henry Ford established the Ford Motor Company in 1903, he could not have foretold the profound effect he would have on the automobile industry. Henry Ford can be said to have transformed the automobile from a luxury utility into an innovation that greatly shaped the 20th Century and still continues to impact the 21st. Entrepreneurs and innovators are responsible for change in society. They formulate, develop and promote new or acquired ideas until they grow into realistic concepts and applications which become acceptable in our day to day lives. Innovation requires creativity, self-confidence, risk taking, good leadership qualities and a ...

Taylorism is name after Frederick Taylor, a production supervisor who devised standardized methods of production, to replace the traditional methods. Fordism is named after Henry Ford, an American engineer who later laid the foundations of Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford also called for specialization of taska in a job, which also helped him produce low cost cars. Both, Ford and Taylor laid the foundations of industrial America. Henry Ford advocated specialization with standard parts for automobiles. Taylor called for specialist workers with organized work to perform the tasks. Ford also focused on arranging machinery in a way that will increase production, ...

Henry Ford is one of the greatest industrialists in the United States of America being the founder of the Ford Motor Company. Though he did not invent the motor vehicle, Henry Ford has a reputation for making landmark innovations in the motor industry. Henry Ford has the credit for building the first motor vehicle affordable to the ordinary American. By lowering the cost of the motor vehicles, he created a large consumer base that marked the genesis of mass production and consumption of motor vehicles. He also has the credit for developing revolutionary labor policies that shaped the American and the ...

Article Review

Summary of modern organization theory Modern organization theories are based on the fact that any organization is adaptive and dynamic to changes in the working environment. Customer sentiment, competition, technology, market diversity are some of the issues that coarse change in any organization. These modern theories are adaptive, multi-motivated, multi-disciplinary, dynamic, and descriptive, among other characteristics (FAO Corporate Document Repository 2013). Modern theories include systems approach theory, contingency or situational approach, and socio-technical approach theory.

Systems approach theory

Ludwig von Bertalanffy, William Ross Ashby among others founded the theory from the 1940’s to the 1970’s. it view an organization ...

Modern Organization Theory

Summary of modern organization theory Modern organization theories are based on the fact that any organization is adaptive and dynamic to changes in the working environment. Customer sentiment, competition, technology, market diversity are some of the issues that coarse change in any organization. These modern theories are adaptive, multi-motivated, multi-disciplinary, dynamic, and descriptive, among other characteristics (FAO Corporate Document Repository 2013). Modern theories include systems approach theory, contingency or situational approach, and socio-technical approach theory. The systems approach theory pictures an organization as an open and organic system that has several subdivisions that make up the whole ...

Introduction

War changes a lot of things. Every time a country goes through a war, some of the major changes take place in that country. Two big wars of all time in the world history are World War I and World War II that brought significant changes in the dynamics of the world. The effects of these two world wars were felt even in the United States. The country experienced both good and bad impacts from these wars. From the time of George Washington’s presidency, the US followed a policy of neutrality to the issues in mainland Europe. George Washington was clearly against ...

Introduction

The Ford Motors Company is a global company having 100 plants located in 38 countries with 15,800 dealer network in 200 markets. The company’s net income is US $ 20.21 billion and total assets are valued at US $ 178.35 billion both as of 2011. This paper is a business case study of Ford Motor Company (Ford). Ford’s Model A car was the first to be produced on mass scale and sold in the U.S. in 1903. The other two to follow suit were General Motors and Chrysler Motor Company in the early 1900s. Ford was founded by Hendry Ford ...

Notably, Henry Ford is identified as an influential figure in the car production industry, as well as an influential speaker. He created a fortune of over $600 million before his death. Levinson (16) argues that Henry Ford saw the importance of influential speaking and using rhetorical figures of speech, which gave the company an added advantage. Henry Ford, like most Americans in the 1800’s, grew up in a farm, in a small township of Springwells. He was born on July 30, 1863 as the first-born to five other siblings. In his school, he revealed an interest to everything mechanical at a ...

Michigan is the state in the Midwestern part of the United States, in the Great Lakes region. It is surrounded by the great Canadian city of Ontario on its northern and eastern border, and by Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, the strait of Mackinac, Ohio and Indiana on its southern side. Illinois and Wisconsin states border in the west. A total area of the state is 58,527 square miles. Michigan state is also known as the Great Lake State because it is surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes: Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Erie. ...

An industrialist, a trend setter, entrepreneur, all these define one personality- Henry Ford. Starting off with a single car manufacturing, he went on to develop a completely new concept that would become world famous pattern of manufacturing in the longer run. He also had a trace of philanthropic element in him and aimed at improving the working conditions and overall life style of the workers involved in different industrial processes. Henry Ford was born in the year 1863 in Michigan. His family had a descendance of farming and agricultural background. His personal inclinations did not show compatibility with the agricultural work and he ...

The first assembly was used in shipbuilding in 1807 in England. This was by Henry Maudsley and Marc Brunel who developed machines that would saw, mortise, drill, turn, recess and Shape wood to make ship pulleys. This was done through 45 machines in the Portsmouth block-making operation. Initially, the technology of the assembly line did not spread fast in England as a result of opposition from workers. Henry Ford perfected the assembly line technology by adding the principles of controlled movement and conveyance to the metal-based industry. This made continuity possible. He also tinkered with assembly line layouts and ...

2. What kind of lifestyle did Henry Ford promote? How did he want people to live? How did he encourage people to live that way? Henry Ford is one of the known innovators in the automobile industry. As a matter of fact, Henry Ford promoted a kind of lifestyle based on how he viewed things and did it. Henry Ford changed the lifestyle of people in one way or another. The move to bring changes in the life of people was based on the innovation and the activities that took place in the company. Ford promoted a lifestyle of socialization within ...

The philosophy Boethius once said as he reflected on his life while wasting away in a prison cell, “there is no pain so great as the contemplation of former happiness in present sorrow.” This is a universal theme in literature, looking back at a better time from the vantage point of a deplorable condition. This essay explores this theme and secondary literary tools that help achieve the feeling of lost Eden that Hemmingway employs in his short story “Hills Like White Elephants.” In some stories, an unwanted change of loss occurs in one instant. Someone could lose a loved one in a dramatic way ...

Introduction: Ford and GM History

The automobile industry is one of the largest job creators in the US. Most automakers are headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and they employ hundreds of thousands of workers. The ongoing recession has dented the prospects of the automakers like Ford and General Motors who have seen their sales dip and their volumes hit by the crisis. Indeed, the situation is so severe that GM had to be bailed out by the government. In this context, the history of the automakers like Ford and GM offers insights into how they work and how they intend to perform in the future. ...

Executive Summary

There have been many proven supply chain management models that preoccupied the minds of manufacturing plant owners since the dawn of the industrial age. There is the traditional way and there is also various specialized way of supply chain system management. In this paper, the author delves on the Build to Order (BTO) model of managing a supply chain as opposed to the traditional one, focusing on the possible upcoming trends on the industries that rely on this production scheme, and on the future of the Build to Order supply chain system management as a whole. A thorough investigation in the ...

The philosophy Boethius once said as he reflected on his life while wasting away in a prison cell, “there is no pain so great as the contemplation of former happiness in present sorrow.” Nostalgia, is a universal theme present in the cannon of literature. The theme explores looking back at a better time from the vantage point of a deplorable condition. This essay explores this theme in two different stories, that unfold the at different thematic tempos. In Jewett the white heron, the focus character Sylvia resists the intrusion of a man in her quite environment of living with her grandma on her ...

The Holocaust is recognized as the as the most horrible and grisly demonstration of the brutality of genocide, and it is shocking to learn that businesses at the time actually profited because of the genocide. Over the years, many American, German, and other foreign countries trying to do business have caused controversy because of their ties in the Holocaust (Greenspan, 2008). The Ford Motor Company, IBM, and IG Farben, a German company, are at the top of the list of companies that played a role in the Holocaust. Although, Hitler hated outgroup religions for centuries, but it was Henry Ford ...

1. What is the author’s central argument (thesis)? In "Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity," Sara Robinson effectively argues that human beings need to go back to the 40 hour work week, as opposed to the 55-60 hour weeks most Americans are working today. She argues that limiting workers' productivity to 40 hours a week guarantees more productive hours on the whole, as people get burned out and more exhausted as the hours go on past that magic number. 2. What evidence is presented to support the central ...

Introduction

Ford motor company was established in the 1900s and has run its operations in an effective manner since then. Its products are wide and varied, and besides manufacturing, it offers credit services, sells vehicle accessories and conducts heavy repairs. Its standardization policy has enabled it to gain acceptance within the social, economic and legal sphere. In the recent past, the company is facing unprecedented competition from both the home and foreign motor manufacturing companies. As such, it has been compelled to make inventions in order to maintain and possibly expand its market share. It has also had to change ...

Ethical Issues in Marketing

Introduction Marketing is an essential function in any business. Marketing without ethics would result in unmoral business. Faced with conflicting pressures, marketing managers may make compromises that include unethical business. Often, such decisions can be rationalized: an inadequately tested product has to be brought to market quickly to beat competition and payments via a third party to organized crime may protect the company's employees as well as its distribution channels (Smith & Quelch, 1996)

Identify ethical issues in marketing

The four P's of marketing: product, price, promotion and placement involve several ethical issues. Product, for example, raises obvious concerns about product safety, but the social ...

Ford Motors is an American automobiles manufacturer. She is touted to be the world’s third largest automobiles manufacturer based on the number of units produced and the global sales records. The company is based in Michigan, close to Detroit in the United States. Ford Motor Company was founded by Henry Ford in 1903 following a brief stint as an engineer at Edison Illuminating Company. He produced a gas powered quadricycle under the aegis of his first automobile company; Detroit Automobile Co. The venture failed and he formed another named Henry Ford Co. The failure of Henry Ford Co, led to ...

Arguably, the 1920’s came up with tremendous changes and freedoms. The inventions and innovations that took place during these era opened doors for various activities. The inventions of the automobile in the 1920’s changed the world; this is because people wanted more freedom. One of the wanted freedoms achieved during this era was the freedom of transportation. One of the advancement of human beings during this time was the invention of automobiles. This was not only an advanced technological invention, but also a social state. This is because invention of automobile influenced and changed the way of living. ...

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a dystopian future is described that is meant to directly comment on our own consumerist culture. The World State keeps the citizens of the world under control by enforcing social classes and brainwashing them to value consumption above all else. In today's society, our need for material goods, and our deeply held beliefs about the 'haves' and 'have-nots' match Huxley's world, but our world allows resistance to those ideas.

The World State is dependent heavily upon a world in which consumerism is king - products are revered, and Henry Ford's principle of the assembly line ...

The rise and fall of the auto industry in Detriot, MI (USA)

There is no city in the whole world which was so powerfully influential to the automobile world than Detroit, Michigan. Detroit was a city without a specialization till the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1900, Detroit’s population was 285000 and was only the thirteenth largest city of the US. It was something like a Jack-of-all-trades city at the end of the 19th century, with its people being engaged in industries as diverse as tobacco products, food manufacture, drugs and chemicals, stove manufacture, ore processing and food production. There has never been another city to command the world of automobiles as ...

Introduction

Nowadays we cannot help but see and hear many troubling things are going on around us. The news overflows with incidents of corruption scandals—of poverty and hunger. The real median income of America has increased only 15% in the last 30 years (Bakan, 2006). That is a .5 % growth each year versus the 1.9 % real GDP growth per year (“A History of Standard Living”, n.d.). How can that be? Where is the American dream? These and other symptoms are a result of the rise and power of corporations. Corporations cause great harm to the society by being amoral, by creating ...

Notably, Ford Motor Company an American multinational company that was established by Henry ford in the year 1903. It is one of the best producers of automobile. It actually operates in two market segments namely financial services and automotive. The company produces trucks and cars. Its products are distributed in the entire world.

Mission Statement for Ford Motor Company

Certainly, every organization in the world has a distinctive reason and purpose for being. The distinctiveness should be reflected in mission and vision statement. In most cases the vision and mission represent competitive disadvantage and advantage of the company. The mission statement of ford motor company is ...

Controlling

Question One

Ratio analysis is a method of computing and interpreting financial ratios to determine organization performance (Drake, 2007). Ratio analysis involves selection of financial data, calculating the required ratio and interpreting the result. In interpreting the results of ratio analysis, already established financial ratios for the industry under which the organization operates in are used benchmark the financial performance of the organization. The main purpose of ratio analysis is to assist in making financial and investment decisions. Internal uses of ratio analysis include evaluation of the performance of the employees, credit policies and the efficiency of operation (Drake, 2007). ...