Nissan Case Study

To generate value Nissan aggressively expanded their foreign manufacturing footprints and leveraged a regional, decentralized supply chain structure whilst imposing strong central control and coordination during global operations crises.

Looking into the competitive threat more closely, the auto industry in the United States is rather sensitive to price, with a price elasticity of 2, or a 5% increase in price contributing to a subsequent 10% fall in demand. Thus, based upon the sticker price decreases potentially implemented by Japanese automakers, Japanese companies’ combined market share (roughly 4.1m units in 2000) stands to increase substantially, and could eat into General Motors’ overall market share. To highlight the sensitivity to the USD-JPY spot exchange rate, GM’s VP of Finance, Eric Feldstein, suggests that just a one-yen depreciation increases competitors’ operating profit by $400m. With $900m in net yen receivables, $500m in outstanding yen-denominated bonds, and more

Toyota was thought to be the best quality car in the 1970s and 1980s but, due to Japanese competition, American car manufactures soon began to close the rankings gap. At the top of their game in 2010, Toyota had to stop manufacturing and order a large recall of automobiles. While leadership was probably considered great at the height of Toyota’s success, changes were obviously needed during the recall period and management needed to be as adaptable to those changing conditions. The only thing regarded as permanent in a market economy is change

General Motors (GM) was one of the premier automakers of the world. Firmly planted as the leader of the big three automakers, GM, Ford, and Chrysler, years of success grounded GM as an economic and cultural icon of American business. As the Japanese auto market grew and became more efficient, turning out improved vehicles that the public wanted, GM was becoming a lumbering behemoth of inefficiency and corporate gluttony. Many circumstances contribute to GM’s road to bankruptcy including high legacy costs in union owned contracts, largely poor design, inferior quality, and low productivity.

Ever since the 2008 recession US automobile companies have been on a steady downhill slide, but actually you can trace this downward trend even further back than 2008. US car companies have been feeling the heat since as early as the late 1980s when Japanese car companies laid claim to American manufacturing plants . Despite a shot in the arm in sales over the past five years, American firms are still on the decline. This case analysis aims to diagnosis the problem, provide analysis of the problem, and propose a viable solution to the problem from the perspective of the US automobile market share leader, General Motors.

Taking reference from Geert Hofstede, a comparative culture profile is made comparing Nissan (Japan) to other similar businesses in Canada.

After the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan, Nissan was able to recover faster than other leading automobile manufactures, such as Toyota and Honda. Nissan was able to recover so quickly because the company had a crisis plan already in place, which involved international connections, relationships and deals with suppliers. In this essay, Nissan’s operation management functions will be discussed, in addition to the critical path method (CPM) and the program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and how these methods can be fused with the company’s project management.

The oil crises of the same period did not help improve the situation by shifting consumer preferences towards the more reliable and economical Japanese alternatives. GM responded not via their traditional method of acquisition, but rather by creating alliances with Isuzu, Suzuki and Toyota (Bordenave and Lung, 2002).

Ghosn’s plan to combine, centralize, and globalize Nissan and Renault’s parts procurement would cut costs by 20 percent! Before this change, Ghosn estimated Nissan’s parts procurement costs were around 10 percent higher than Renault’s. To accomplish his goal, Ghosn had to prove that the precious keiretsu system of Japan was promoting

Despite their status, they are not the dominant source of power since the company’ culture does not allow concentration of power in a single source. However, they have been a guiding force in times of crisis, especially when Aido Toyoda was at the helm and he helped Toyota become the largest automotive manufacturer by developing a focussed regional approach commercially. He exhibited an ability to ‘retool’ when he showed flexibility in directing a more regional approach to work in different markets as compared to implementing reliable yet universal processes in each region.

Over time, it’s how we will build GM into the world’s most valued automotive company.”

Carlos Ghosn was credited for successful management of Japanese firm Nissan to a profitability which earned him a well known name called "TurnaroundArtist." Even though he was an outsider and lack a clear understanding of the traditional working methods of the Japanese firms, Carlos did a recommendable work which brought the company into sense of urgency in management. According to IBSCDC (2005) when Carlos was the CEO for the Nissan Company, he managed to reduce the firm's debts of about $19 billion to almost zero.

Carlos Ghosn in March of 1999 became the first non-Japanese Chief Operating Officer of the Nissan Motor Company. Nissan was experiencing a very hard financial hardship in total about seven years Nissan was in about 22 billion dollars in financial debt. Nissan have very little capital to use in order to develop new product the future of Nissan was not looking very bright. The last professional cry was help was to recruit Carlos Ghosn. (Millikin, 2005).

BMW (U.S) Holding Corporation is a franchise of the high-end performance based global automotive company BMW. For the first time in its history, BMW is to launch its first American made car, the BMW Z3 Roadster. Having only made cars in Germany, this time the car is to be assembled in Spartanburg, South Carolina. BMW’s objective is to expand its market share in the U.S., make the brand name more global and improve its dealer network. With this in mind, the company developed a two phases launch plan for the BMW Z3 Roadster.

Orientation is a process of introducing a new employee to his or her job & to the organization. There are two types of orientation. Work unit orientation familiarizes the employee the goals of the work unit, clarifies how his or her job contributes to the unit¡¦s goals, & includes an introduction to his / her new co-workers. Organization orientation informs the new employee about the organization¡¦s objectives, history, philosophy, procedures & rules. This should include relevant human resources policies & benefits such as work hours, pay procedures, over time requirements, and fringe benefits. In addition, a tour of the organization¡¦s work facilities is often part of the organization orientation.