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Ford's new CEO plans action blitz in first 100 days


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https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2017/06/18/fords-new-ceo-plans-action-blitz-first-100-days/102988074/

 

 


•Re-evaluate revenue opportunities: With U.S. industry sales plateauing or falling, Hackett said Ford must look for new revenue opportunities and review areas where the company is not making money.
•Evaluate the "fitness of the company": This means trying to figure out the best, most efficient way to operate the business or making sure the best process is being followed to create products. "It’s actually finding ways to design things so that we don’t have redundancy and overlap," Hackett said.
•Re-evaluate capital deployment: Hackett wants to make sure Ford is getting an acceptable return on its investments.
•Renew focus on innovation: Hackett wants to make sure the automaker is as focused as possible on becoming a leader on the development of autonomous vehicles and on emerging opportunities as a mobility service provider.
•Hackett pointed to the company's decision to exit Japan last year as an example of a smart decision to conserve money instead of spending it in a place where Ford had no hope of gaining significant market share.

"The good news is, we have plenty of capital. ... The sources of capital are not the problem. It’s the uses," Hackett said. "You can exit things — it's well-known, competitors have been doing that — and Ford has been on that already."

George Galliers, an auto analyst for Evercore ISI who recently spent two days with Ford executives, said the company is looking at ways to make more money on small cars and appears to be considering a withdrawal from doing business in India — a move that would follow a decision last month by General Motors to stop selling vehicles in India.

 

Hmmmm that would contradict what is happening with the Ecosport, unless they are looking at importing it for a few years then replacing the Fiesta with it in Mexico.

 

 

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2017/06/18/fords-new-ceo-plans-action-blitz-first-100-days/102988074/

said the company is looking at ways to make more money on small cars and appears to be considering a withdrawal from doing business in India — a move that would follow a decision last month by General Motors to stop selling vehicles in India.

 

 

Hmmmm that would contradict what is happening with the Ecosport, unless they are looking at importing it for a few years then replacing the Fiesta with it in Mexico.

Two different things

1. Producing vehicles for Indian domestic market

2. Fords built in India mostly for export to Asia Pacific and perhaps other areas.

 

Also,

I wonder what the verdict is now on Fields' delaying of new product cycles for C1, CD4 and D3

Right when the market is expecting new key product (Focus, Escape, Fusion, Explorer)

we have again another MCE...maybe the chiefs are finally seeing that pushing back

all of those new products may not be in Ford's best interest when competitors are

getting so much fresh product.

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I like the sense of urgency. We will see what comes of it sooner rather than later perhaps.

 

Unfortunately I don't think there is a quick fix for the product issues. Maybe he can accelerate some of the new vehicles. Hopefully we'll get more details about what's going to happen with Focus, Fusion and the new C/Model E platform.

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My fear? Another "quick turn around expert". Sacrifice the future for the quick short term savings and the good press HE will get.

 

Some of Fields' messes need undone rather quickly, but Hackett has a good reputation of foundation repair, not patching.

 

 

Unfortunately I don't think there is a quick fix for the product issues. Maybe he can accelerate some of the new vehicles. Hopefully we'll get more details about what's going to happen with Focus, Fusion and the new C/Model E platform.

 

Just getting things back on, or close to, their initial timelines would be a godsend. Fusion, Focus, Escape, Edge, and Explorer are going to be embarrassingly outclassed at the end of their cycles (as the plans sit now).

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The amount of efficiency you gain by flattening a large organization can be incredible. Instead of having 5 meetings where good ideas can get watered down and or die, you have a couple. The last meeting is with the ultimate decision makers. If you hire good folks and trust them, this system works. It becomes pretty clear who is valuable and who is not in this system.

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Hopefully he can accelerate product development. It sounds like Fields just put everything on cruise control and didn't think products needed updates to stay competitive (the "oh they're doing well, we can push that update back for now" mentality), and Ford already has a few old products in the lineup that clearly need updates.

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Never have a meeting with more people than you can feed with two pizzas. Love it.

 

Been there, done that trying to get things done with 10, 15 or more organizations and conference calls with 40+ people and it just doesn't work.

 

But what if one person in the meeting eats a lot of pizza by themselves? :hysterical:

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Some of Fields' messes need undone rather quickly, but Hackett has a good reputation of foundation repair, not patching.

 

 

Just getting things back on, or close to, their initial timelines would be a godsend. Fusion, Focus, Escape, Edge, and Explorer are going to be embarrassingly outclassed at the end of their cycles (as the plans sit now).

I would argue that Fusion and Focus already are, with Edge quickly falling behind.
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I would argue that Fusion and Focus already are, with Edge quickly falling behind.

 

Fusion and Focus, yes. And Fiesta and Taurus. But Edge is only 2 years old on a brand new platform so it's fine with a decent MCE in a year or two.

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Forget the hiring of Hackett as CEO, the real changes worth noting just may be the restructuring of Ford’s operation. Basically, Hinrichs is responsible for engineering and designing vehicles, while Farley is responsible for selling them. Also, instead of having 18 people report to the CEO, it’s now only eight.

There’s an interesting article in this week’s Automotive News on Ford’s restructuring. People who study companies and their organizational structure, are giving these changes pretty good reviews.

 

Of course, the challenge now is to successfully implement these changes. We’ll have to wait and see what happens there.

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Fusion and Focus, yes. And Fiesta and Taurus. But Edge is only 2 years old on a brand new platform so it's fine with a decent MCE in a year or two.

I meant Explorer. I was looking at the word Edge as I was typing. Edge should be fine, everyone else. seems to be chasing it.

 

 

Side note, are we getting the new fiesta here? Everywhere I look still says TBA.

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Hopefully he can accelerate product development. It sounds like Fields just put everything on cruise control and didn't think products needed updates to stay competitive (the "oh they're doing well, we can push that update back for now" mentality), and Ford already has a few old products in the lineup that clearly need updates.

 

I expect that the CD6 program should be the first to get pulled back into reality, as it was unfortunately flagged under review as further cycling of D3 was studied. So many products revolved around that program I think that was what kickstarted the havoc.

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Fusion and Focus, yes. And Fiesta and Taurus. But Edge is only 2 years old on a brand new platform so it's fine with a decent MCE in a year or two.

 

Fusion is better off than Focus, but not too much.

 

I meant Explorer. I was looking at the word Edge as I was typing. Edge should be fine, everyone else. seems to be chasing it.

 

 

Side note, are we getting the new fiesta here? Everywhere I look still says TBA.

 

I'd argue Explorer is already behind, as its competition like Traverse is just being redesigned, and we know that any Explorer replacement is at minimum 2-3 years away it seems.

 

As for Fiesta, yeah, there's no news on it. Perhaps that's one thing that Hackett can do right away - announce that our Fiesta is being replaced with the one that was debuted in Europe a few months ago.

 

 

I expect that the CD6 program should be the first to get pulled back into reality, as it was unfortunately flagged under review as further cycling of D3 was studied. So many products revolved around that program I think that was what kickstarted the havoc.

 

Let's hope so. That's pretty pathetic if they were considering on just rehashing D4 again. It's already outdated and has known limitations.

 

Yeah if the rumors were true, there's a whole suite of products that are now on hold if CD6 was delayed.

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How ironic if in a year fields looks like a genius by not dumping cash on product nobody wants like sedans and small cars..can only imagine the finger pointing going on at ford if this new strategy goes down the wrong rabbit hole.....personally id dump cash into suv's and trucks..any small compacts should be left to rot..but hell racing strips on office furniture i guess is a niche market the new guy may be good at developing

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Exiting retail sales India will definitely help with EcoSport because the new one will not need to be restricted to 4 meters which makes it too small and uncompetitive in every other market.

The short length of Ecosport predates this product cycle and is is something that Brazil baked into the design early.

I think this was more about Brazil home room design team building Ecosports for themselves first and other BRIC

markets

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How ironic if in a year fields looks like a genius by not dumping cash on product nobody wants like sedans and small cars..can only imagine the finger pointing going on at ford if this new strategy goes down the wrong rabbit hole.....personally id dump cash into suv's and trucks..any small compacts should be left to rot..but hell racing strips on office furniture i guess is a niche market the new guy may be good at developing

 

Products nobody wants? You really aren't paying attention to sales figures.

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How ironic if in a year fields looks like a genius by not dumping cash on product nobody wants like sedans and small cars..can only imagine the finger pointing going on at ford if this new strategy goes down the wrong rabbit hole.....personally id dump cash into suv's and trucks..any small compacts should be left to rot..but hell racing strips on office furniture i guess is a niche market the new guy may be good at developing

Ford has a lot to be thankful for with lots of cash at hand but they have serious quality issues that persist

and can be traced to screwing down suppliers too tightly, connect the dots and this is what Fields made

Hinrichs the fall guy for ( his stingy policies, the chickens came home to roost)

 

Cars still have an important role to play and it's vital that Ford manage the sales transition here.

Combining Focus and Fusion production in Mexico is a step that was needed for the past few years

Edited by jpd80
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The growing concern for me is the age of D3 - Explorer, Flex, Taurus, MKT all need changing to remain competitive.

If CD6 exists as more than just a good idea, it needs to be fast tracked to keep Ford in the game in those strategically

important segments.

Edited by jpd80
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