Ford Motor Company – Case Study
Jason Austin
Denine Rood
Jeanne Sands
Like apple pie and a summer baseball game, Ford Motor Company has come to symbolize America, the land of opportunity. This America is a place where a person with scarcely any means can take little more than an idea and transform it into one of the most successful companies in the world. This is the story of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. Consider the following quote from the Ford Web site.
Ford Motor Company entered the business world on June 16, 1903, when Henry Ford and 11 business associates signed the company's articles of incorporation. With $28,000 in cash, the pioneering industrialists gave birth to what was to become one of the world's largest corporations. Few companies are as closely identified with the history and development of industry and society throughout the 20th century as Ford Motor Company.
Henry Ford and his business partners where true entrepreneurs. Today, when we think about Ford, we think about innovation. From Henry Ford’s revolutionary idea of the assembly line to the new vehicles that Ford introduces every day, innovation has always been a cornerstone of Ford’s business. One little known fact is that Ford embraced QFD (Quality Function Deployment)1, a Japanese quality methodology, into their product design process significantly earlier than most companies in the United States. This embracing of new ideology has led Ford to offer products that are not only differentiated from what their competitors are offering, but also products in the vanguard of technology, safety, and innovation.
The other quality that we think of in relation to Ford is history. For over 100 years, Ford has been making vehicles and everything from their vehicles to their marketing campaigns is steeped in tradition. One recent example of this was the advertising campaign featuring Bill Ford, who talked about his families’ history and how Ford...