Teri Takai, Director of supply chain systems contemplate recommendations to senior executives. The questions asked extremely important to Ford’s future:
How should the company use:
emerging information technologies (i.e. Internet technologies)?
ideas from new high-tech industries to change the way it interacted with suppliers?
Some argued that the new technology made it inevitable that entirely new business models would prevail
Ford needed to radically redesign its supply chain and other activities or risk being left behind
favored “virtual integration”
modeling the Ford supply chain on that of companies, such as Dell
Another group was more cautious, believing that the difference between the auto business and relatively newer businesses
(i.e., computer manufacturing) were important and substantive
Ford supplier network had many more layers and companies
Purchasing organization played a more prominent and independent role than had Dell’s
Dell had delivered on these dimensions, do you think the same methods would deliver results for Ford?
Based in Dearborn, Michigan,
Second largest industrial corporation in the world
Revenues of more than 144 billion
About 370,000 employees
Operations spanned 200 countries.
obtained significant revenues and profits from its financial services subsidiaries, core business had remained the design and manufacture of automobiles for sale on the consumer market
Since Henry Ford had incorporated in 1903, the company had produced over 260 million vehicles