Word: magnas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Indeed, within the car industry, executives have taken to using the words car assembler and car developer in place of the old term carmaker. The evolution in language mirrors the development of Magna, whose success Frank Stronach couldn't even have begun to dream about in 1954, when, at age 22, he left his native Austria for Canada with $200 in his pocket and about the same number of English words in his vocabulary. Three years later he managed to start up a tool-and-die shop in a rented garage in downtown Toronto, and in 1960 he signed...
...company was focused on the ground: it gradually began offering more and more components to the auto industry, from visor brackets to complete roof systems. As the order books bulged, so did Stronach's paycheck--by 1987 he had become Canada's highest-paid executive. Around that time, Magna's engineers developed the Torrero from the company's components inventory to drive home a point: it's not the parts that matter; it's how they fit together that counts. Dennis Blommers, a plant manager for Magna's Decoma division, which specializes in exterior systems, has been along for much...
That was only the start. Suppliers began making complete prefabricated front ends, back ends and middles of vehicles, and automakers began outsourcing the entire design, development and manufacture of certain car models like the Lincoln Navigator. The results of this shift can be seen in Magna's order book. Although European and American auto production inched up only slightly during fiscal 1998, the company's sales topped $6 billion--a 19% jump over 1997. "Systems suppliers are getting a bigger piece of the pie," says Anders Franzen, vice president for strategic sourcing at Sweden's Volvo, which...
...Liesenfeld, Magna's European spokesman, agrees. "The manufacturers are using shared platforms to bring more and more niche vehicles to the market. Those platforms are what everything else is based on. We design a module to fit an existing platform, but it's the carmakers who define the platform." Assemblers usually settle on one or two preferred suppliers for each model, but there is always another supplier ready to jump in if one or more of the chosen stumble. "If Magna doesn't provide the best price, GM can go down the street to somebody else," Magna's Blommers explains...
...divisions as they define and redefine themselves." In the welter of change, the so-called systems partners are finally emerging from the shadows to become significant names in their own right. Perhaps one day they will start pitching their product directly to the public. Who knows, maybe "Auto by Magna" will replace old rubrics like "Body by Fisher...