Word: forded
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Troubles. It was a dramatic gesture, but no single change could save the ailing Ford Motor Co. The Ford car was second to Chevrolet, and the company had fallen far behind the industry in engineering and styling. World War II, with its big military orders, gave the company a breather. But at war's end, after the death of Edsel Ford and with the rapid aging of Old Henry, the tough job of saving the company was handed to young Henry (who signs his office memos...
Young Henry brought in Ernest R. Breech, a crack production man who had run three General Motors subsidiaries, and made him executive vice president. When he joined Ford, said Breech, "there was no second team. We had nothing but top bosses and workers. We had no real research. Even the new [postwar] engine was no good; the Rouge was obsolete, and the company had lost $55 million in the first half of '46. About all we had that was any 'good was the name of Ford...
...Solutions. Together, Breech and HF II performed radical surgery. They shucked off all Old Henry Ford's peripheral enterprises, such as his Brazilian rubber plantations, his money-losing deal to make Harry Ferguson's tractors,* his experimental farms. They had another big problem: the inheritance taxes on the $208 million estates of Henry and Edsel. Luckily, Old Henry himself left $28 million in cash, and the family got the rest by loans from the company and sales of property. They kept control in the family by keeping the 172,645 shares of voting stock (now held in equal...
After reorganizing the company from top to bottom, Ford and Breech began to plow back profits and cash on hand into modernization and expansion...
...whole new management team was assembled, Ford demonstrated that he had inherited his grandfather's capacities for radical innovations. He ordered tests to pick out promising young men on the production line to send them to school for training as managers. In spite of the fact that the company was overloaded with older workers, the corporation took on an $8,000,000 burden to set up pensions. But it reaped dividends in efficiency. Ford became a young man's company: the average age of its 35,000 salaried men is only 38, and that of its 130.000 production...