Toyota VS Ford Options

[tomazws]

A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River . Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents, and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the ”Rowing Team Quality First Program” with meetings, dinners, and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India .

Sadly, The End.

Here's something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years trying to move all of its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages.

TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results for 2007:

TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.

Senior managers at Ford are still scratching their heads.

IF THIS WEREN'T SO TRUE, IT MIGHT BE FUNNY.

This post has been edited by tomazws: Nov 13, 2008 - 12:51 PM

[creis]

A friend and engineer at boeing told me once, the only major diffarance between the big car copmanies is not the designes or what company degisned what part of the car but the level of tolarance in manufacturing. meaning how close the car was built to the original design (ex. machined within .001 of a inch to the original design or within .00001 of an inch to the original.) I cant remember the exact numbers but ford had the biggest margin followed by dodge with GM having the stricktest/best. point being that just because 2 cars are the same design does not mean there the same quality.

Just food for though.