Achieving World Class Business Performance Essay examples

General Motors is faced with a dilemma. In the face of economic depression, competition from foreign players was driving down profits and the market’s preference was changing to efficient cars due to

it focused only four brands but was still global and utilizing 70% of its sales from outside of the United States. “Re-emerging at the new GM is the competitive spirit that, for decades, drove GM to leadership in styling, technology, engineering, marketing, and other key areas of the auto business. This spirit guides the new GM as it works to design, build, and sell the world’s best vehicles.”(History & Heritage-Rebirth,” 2014)

General Motors is one of the most highly decorated American car manufacturers in the world. Winning top honors from the Global Supply industry (Awards). General Motors earns countless awards throughout the brands of the company year after year. Founded in 1897 by William Durant, General Motors is one of the world’s largest car manufacturers. With Mary Barra’s leadership, General Motors produce cars, trucks, and hybrids. GM owns 18 brands, but their most famous makes are Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC (GM Profile). The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint General Motor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

A range of evidence should be gathered to cover the Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria. Examples may include:  Annotated organisational policies and procedures  Appraisal or work review  Minutes of team meetings  Feedback received from colleagues  Feedback provided to colleagues  Internal communications between colleagues  Communication seeking guidance

The Japanese automakers such as Toyota are dangerous competitors for the General Motors Corporation and the have scrambled for quite a large part of market shares if the GM in America and the global markets. The Japanese competitors cut down the cost tremendously by lean production. However, the production cost is still high in the General Motors Corporation. And the inefficiency of production cause the high price of its automobiles and the market share shrinks accordingly. (Coffey, 2005) Especially in face of the financial crisis, the General Motors Corporation has much to learn form lean production to cut down its production prices.

Recently there have been doubts concerning the survival of General Motors. These doubts stem in part from the firm’s unawareness of the automotive industry’s external business environment. This includes the consumer’s view of current events and economic trends. There are also key issues such as the emergence of technology that are related to the automobile industry that are covered by trade publications.[i] Doubts also stem from problems associated with G.M.’s internal business environment. These problems likely arose from the firm following the wrong generic strategy.

I have grown up around General Motors vehicles. My grandparents drove Cadillacs and Buicks, my parents and I drive Chevrolets. The vehicles have always been reliable and the dealerships were always pleasant. For this final paper, I decided to go deeper into the company.

In the vehicle and engine businesses we have achieved a top-class level of quality and productivity within the Toyota Group and are contributing to Toyota Motor Corporation's car production.

This business brief will discuss Autoliv, a Fortune 500 company who manufactures automotive safety components (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Autoliv has over 80 plants in more than 32 countries, all of which run on a lean manufacturing system, which is referred to as “Autoliv Production System (APS) (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Toyota pioneered the principles that the APS is based on (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Another A lean system allows businesses to improve operations, by getting rid of the “unwanted waste”, such as overproduction, transportation, waiting, motion, inventory, defects, etc (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013).

This research looks at the General Motors Company and what led to company failure and filing of bankruptcy in 2009. The American automotive industry was poorly managed for years and was almost eliminated when the economy crashed in 2008. Without the help of the U.S. government, General Motors and Chrysler would not have been able to survive. How did GM, as the number one auto manufacturer and seller, go from being at the top to almost ceasing to exist? This kind of financial mess usually takes years of poor decisions and does not happen to a large company overnight. To come to my conclusion I analyzed four books written by people with inside knowledge of the company, as well as magazine articles and a couple of online websites.

General Motors could have saved by implementing a few of the TQM standards that Toyota applies. By keeping up with technology, General Motors can obtain a higher customer base, faster productivity with less defective rate (Dyadem, 2008). Employees of General Motors had problems selling products that they knew had flaws or defects, and customers did not want to purchase products that were not up to the highest standard possible (Dyadem, 2008). GM understands the importance of addressing quality planning through a global

General Motors has incorporated lean manufacturing principles in all of their plants, which in turn allows them manage their costs as well as preserve their low breakeven levels. The second strategy used by GM is the six-sigma principle. The way they do this is they train all GM engineers and certify them in six-sigma principles to improve quality and the outcomes of their product. One of the ways they drive efficiencies is by using a flexible vehicle strategy they have 14 core and 12 regional in 2015, and are working toward only 4 vehicle sets by 2025. Next, they are using a strategy that would allow for stable and longer architecture life cycles. These cost efficiency methods have caused the company to save a great amount of material, and strengthen their overall brand. Focusing on their brand, GM maintains their operational practices by using six-sigma and lean inventories

to buy these shares only looses all the money that he or she has put

The senior managers were all from Toyota and quickly implemented an exact copy of the Toyota Production System” (p.82). Unfortunately, the principles of this experience were not extrapolated more widely into GM operations.

I am planning to open a sporting good store. There are certain things I need to do in order to properly plan, organize, direct, and control this store. I would also need differing levels of management and decide on a management style that works best for both my store and me. In this paper I would develop a plan that will cover all these things so that I may open a successful business.