Ford 2000

Strategic planning is the process most successful companies embrace when determining the route to achieving their business objective. It is a powerful technique, which mobilises resources behind a plan and is one of the most important factors which distinguishes progressive organisations who have identified and communicated, externally and internally, the type of business they want to become. When Ford developed Ford 2000, it was accepted that the company, although successful, had reached a cross-roads. The business faced many challenges in a number of its competitive environments and required innovative solutions to boost global competitiveness, in order to sustain continuous growth.

The location of large new plants by Japanese companies on green field sites in the UK has added to the nature and type of competition. Such changes have created a need for companies like Ford to look again at their operations to view how they could improve their competitiveness in order to counter threats and reduce the performance gap between themselves and their global competitors.

Ford 2000

Ford’s vision is ‘to be the world’s leading automotive company’. It is a management declaration of the direction the Company is taking and sends a clear message to customers, competitors, suppliers and shareholders. Ford’s vision doesn’t “mean the biggest; it means the best.” In Ford terms, leadership means ‘product excellence linked to being the best in customer satisfaction, value, cost and profitability’. In order to achieve this vision Ford 2000 set out seven strategies for leadership. These are:

Ford 2000 indicated that manufacturing plants could no longer be managed on a local basis and must become integrated into the new worldwide manufacturing strategy. The goal has been to focus every Ford resource and to use it more effectively to meet customer needs. It represents a different way of thinking allowing the pace of change to accelerate. According to Alex Trotman, the Ford...