Strategy
With the use of 3D printing, the company’s engineers and assembly workers may create their own manufacturing equipment. Individually, this allows for the design and fabrication of tools that are tailored to each worker’s unique physical needs, such as the size of the hands or the strength of the grasp (Hallam, Valerdi & Contreras, 2018). Prior to the Ranger’s introduction, specialized tools were created to expedite production and ensure that each vehicle that left the assembly line had the same high level of quality.
Workers on the production line may cooperate with specialists in advanced manufacturing to find ways that additive manufacturing processes can save the organization money and time. A 3D replacement component may be designed, specified, and printed to keep production lines operating instead of waiting weeks or days for parts to be purchased or made elsewhere. The corporation may save more than $2 million if one of these is developed. In the future, it’s expected that 3D printing will become more commonplace, both within and outside of businesses (Met at el., 2020),
As demand for other Industry 4.0-enabled and 3D printing operations responsibilities grows, organizations will need to find new methods to attract and educate employees. DfAM (Design for Additive Manufacture) is a methodology that Ford has started teaching its workers. As a result, students must learn about the production hardware process and software components as part of their design education. As a result, vehicle concepts are influenced by the advanced manufacturing center’s use of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technology in design. Before a single car is produced, Ford’s engineers may use digital environments to establish virtual production lines, perform test cases scenarios, and discover possible risks.
If you haven’t heard of “cobots,” these are collaborative robots that have been a part of the manufacturing process for some time. The corporation has over 100 of these robots spread over 24 of its sites, and they’re meant to function in tandem with human employees. In comparison to earlier generations of robots, cobots have a smaller footprint and more mobility, making them safer to use without requiring costly and difficult-to-access protective cages (Raff, 2018). They are also capable of working in dangerous settings and for longer periods of time than humans. Ford’s Livonia Transmission Plant uses a cobot to execute ergonomic activities that a human worker may only undertake for an hour at a time due to health and safety issues.
Core Competencies
Ford Motor Company, founded in 1903, is a strategic and technologically advanced vehicle manufacturer. It was the first of its type to apply human resource management methods and innovative manufacturing, such as conveyor belts and moving assembly lines by pricing items that could be bought by its workers with a fair and regular salary. There are several significant instances of this innovation. The Model-TI is one of the most well-known. To cope with the ever-changing external environment during the previous century as well as in the present times, Ford has constantly adjusted its strategy by extending and contracting its product ranges in order to keep up with the times (Toma & Naruo, 2017). According to the company’s stated goals, the following mission and vision accurately reflect its capabilities. Ford’s core competence was their manufacturing procedures to maximize profits and their core efficiency to adapt to the changing external environment, which was a major factor in their success. Since then, their core skill has evolved to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding external environment. Strong brand awareness, alliances with competitors, and the ‘One Ford Plan’ are among Ford’s current Core competencies. Their unique strength is their aggressive growth plan, which involves reducing their portfolio utilizing a variety of cost-cutting methods.
Industry Dynamics
The usage of robots has historically sparked concerns about the effect on human employment. Nearly 40 percent of all American employment are predicted to be taken over by robots by the early 2030s. To put this in perspective, according to a report from Loup Ventures, by 2025, there will be an increase in the workforce by a factor of three, 34 percent of industrial robots will be collaborative, and the market for industrial robots will grow 175 percent. This growth is expected to have a significant impact on collaborative, support platforms.
Future advancements in low-cost collaborative robotics technologies are expected to widen the variety of applications in which automation technology may be used, leading to increased adoption in a new set of verticals. Computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI), and motion sensing capabilities are driving the use of this technology in the automobile sector. Future advancements in low-cost collaborative robotics technologies are expected to widen the variety of applications in which automation technology may be used, leading to increased adoption in a new set of verticals.
From the production floor to the design and functioning of its next generation of vehicles, Ford Motor Company is promoting human-machine interaction. This truck is a good example of how Industry 4.0 digital technologies are being utilized to improve the driving experience. The team should hire experts in human culture who ride in the backseat of the F-150 as impartial observers, interactions, searching for patterns and new behaviors around the vehicle technology in order to comprehend and prove its usefulness and desirableness. At “hotspots” like truck rallies and car fairs, researchers may gather feedback from truck enthusiasts about what works and what doesn’t. Refined designs are shown to real truck users so that they may provide their comments on the results of the study of customer data.
Technological Sourcing and Internal Innovation
Ford chose to develop a new community of smart mobility innovators because of the high degree of complexity and the many unknowns in the innovation challenge. The establishment of an open hardware standard and an open source for simple access to 19 machine-readable data sets from Ford automobiles was a key milestone in the process. The creation and release of the OpenXC1 open standard drew a new generation of software and hardware developers that used vehicle data from Ford’s cars to create cutting-edge, intelligent mobility solutions. There were several benefits to starting a community based on Ford’s car data (Umpfenbach at el., 2017). First and foremost, it needed less resources than maintaining connections with individual academics from universities, research institutes, or start-ups. Ford would normally provide a separate set of data requirements for each person engaged in a bilateral relationship. Ford has the greatest opportunity of developing network effects by establishing a single, open standard and fostering a community around it. Secondly, Ford was able to actively develop the community’s norms, standards, and data in respect to its open data sets because of this strategy. As a result, participating in existing open hardware and software development groups would have been far more challenging.
Access to Ford car use data was necessary for OpenXC community members to create novel smart mobility solutions, including mobile and smart hardware applications (such as level, pedal positions, speed and fuel). Ford, on the other hand, intended to maintain control over the information that the driver had access to. Using Ford’s OpenXC platform API, up to 19 machine-readable vehicle data streams may be accessed.
Product Development Strategy
The Ford Product Development system has been in place for some time now, and it establishes a single template for the creation of all Ford automobiles across the globe. It is hoped that the One Ford (GPDS) would allow Ford to produce more cars quicker, boost competitiveness, and generate profitable growth. All worldwide products, such as, Fiesta, Focus and the Ranger, are now developed by a single global (PD) team. Ford’s worldwide product, powertrain, and technology goals are now being implemented globally, rather than by regional Ford units operating independently (Umpfenbach at el., 2018).
All of Ford’s best resources may now be used in a global product development system (GPDS) to produce global commodities that customers genuinely want. In the past, Ford’s hybrid automobiles were only accessible in the US. Since “it is quite a pricey enterprise to design for one local market,” hybrids have never been affordable in Europe. With one Ford, we’ll be able to provide all of our markets with the most up-to-date technology at a reduced cost due to economies of scale.”
Strategy to Protect Innovations
If a patent is held by Ford Motor Corporation, the company has the legal right to restrict anybody else from using that invention in any way. Trade, sale or licensing of Ford Motor patented technology opens new options for Ford Motor innovators. According to national IP legislation, the requirements for a patent may range from country to country. However, in order to get a patent, an inventor must show that their invention is novel, beneficial, and not apparent to others in the area of their invention. In order to do so, they must explain how their technology works and what it can do. Patents, in addition to paying and honoring inventors for their commercially successful innovations, also inform the public about new ideas. Inventors who want to have their inventions protected by a patent must offer a thorough description of how they operate. In reality, the quantity of publicly accessible technical knowledge grows exponentially with each new patent.
Trade secret protection may give remedies against Ford Motor rivals that misappropriate new ideas from people who keep them confidential. Trade secrets may remain considerably longer and be more valuable than patents for technology that is difficult to create, replicate, or reverse engineer. To the extent possible, intelligent executives will recognize when to give up on patent protection in favor of trade-secret protection – or completely, when safeguarding invention isn’t worth the effort.
References
Hallam, C. R., Valerdi, R., & Contreras, C. (2018). Strategic lean actions for sustainable competitive advantage. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management.
Met, İ., Uysal, E. U., Özkaya, K. S., & Orç, E. (2020). Key success factors for strategic management in digital business. In Digital Business Strategies in Blockchain Ecosystems (pp. 283-304). Springer, Cham.
Raff, D. M. (2018). GM and the Evolving Industrial Organisation of American Automobile Manufacturing in the Interwar Years. In Coping with Variety (pp. 35-57). Routledge.
Toma, S. G., & Naruo, S. (2017). Total quality management and business excellence: the best practices at Toyota Motor Corporation. Amfiteatru Economic Journal, 19(45), 566-580.
Umpfenbach, E. L., Dalkiran, E., Chinnam, R. B., & Murat, A. E. (2017). Optimization of strategic planning processes for configurable products. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1-21.
Umpfenbach, E. L., Dalkiran, E., Chinnam, R. B., & Murat, A. E. (2018). Promoting sustainability of automotive products through strategic assortment planning. European Journal of Operational Research, 269(1), 272-285.
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