Analysis Of Transition Of Ford Halewood To Jaguar Halewood

This paper is reporting on information received by secondary source and presents an analytical of the transition of Ford Halewood to Jaguar Halewood. The methodological approach to the Jaguar Halewood transition is analyzed in six steps as follows: Structure, Personnel and staff relations, Plant, Culture, Communication, and Leadership and Management styles. In pursuit of its mandate, the new Board of Jaguar Halewood evolved a system of leading change management strategies to enhance quality, customer satisfaction, and return on investment.

Jaguar was founded in 1922. The British car maker Jaguar remains a symbol of status. In the 80-90 automotive industry has changed dramatically. At that time, Henry Ford's achievements prevailed. A system aimed at creating standardized models, such as the T Ford, which was known as Fordism, was very successful in cutting costs and affordable income for low-cost cars. After the success of the Japanese cars and the automotive world became more competitive, many companies had to respond to rapidly changing demands. This necessitated rationalization. Instead of hundreds of car companies, there are ten major players. This led to the development of a new Ford group. In the 1990s, Jaguar became part of these groups. Ford Halewood produced Ford Escort с 1963 and produced over six million vehicles with maximum employees of thirteen thousand. It was until the management change in 1998 that the Halewood press shop began supply of Jaguar X-400. Jaguar was in a difficult situation and was experiencing a decline in management. This was reflected both in the competition of emerging brands and in poor management. The peak was the upswing of Ford Halewood. By the beginning of the 90s, they began to produce about 1, 500 cars with about 6, 500 employees. While Jaguar moved and in 1998, employees were cut by half and produced only 100, 000 units per year.

Vision for change

Halewood / Jaguar’s change of management was based on three principles:

• quality value for money
• customer care
• human resource management.

And seven behavioral benchmarks: quality, customer orientation, accountability / responsibility, respect, open communication, teamwork, adaptability and flexibility. These values and behavior formed a foothold of leadership.

The change process includes:

• Recognizing the need to change
• Diagnosis
• Planning
• Implementation and review progress
• Sustaining the change.

After recognition and diagnosis the need to change Jaguar/Halewood planned step-by-step methodology:

• Structure
• Personnel and Staff Relations
• Plant
• Culture
• Communication
• Leadership and Management styles.

Structure

The structure and organization of management used the concept of the structure of people. This structure helps to put specific people in specific positions in order to achieve their organizational goals.

The acquisition of Jaguar at Halewood was to boost the company's economy and regain lost brand fame. For this, a division of labor is necessary to create successful groups of competent people who have certain activities and responsibilities and to whom they respond. This made it necessary to structure the organization. Halewood / Jaguar was a structure of a concept of decentralized, and multi-visional organizations (for example, General Motors) and consisted of three levels. Thus, it was more reliable, flexible and able to cope with changes in the business environment. David Hudson headed Operations Jaguar, he had 20 years’ experience as a director at Jaguar plants in the Midlands. It was he who transformed the Rover and Jaguar and had a lot of experience. Hudson transformed the team from Ford-Jaguar to Jaguar / Halewood. In this he was helped by the formation of the departmental structure. Operations were divided into departments: Controller, Personnel, Production, Transitional Group, Corporate Affairs, PVT, Operating Quality System and Quality of the Plant.

The third level consisted of the press Body-in-White, Trim and Final, the Paint Shop and M & L. D, subsequently similar to the fate of the Jaguar from the bottom up in a short three years. Leadership has ensured that the key factors in employment are competence, especially managers. Personnel and Staff RelationsHalewood was known for production problems. The new management team has developed crucial personnel changes to achieve its goals. The Green Book was signed, focused on changing norms, roles and values in groups. After Hudson accepted union members at the West Midlands plants in Jaguar, they recognized the discipline of their employees at West Midlands as the proper way to do business successfully. Halewood employees were not enthusiastic about the changes, but there was an external motivation as they saw employees from West Mild. They said: “We don’t want to build Jaguar cars using Escort money”.

Plant

The success was due to the fact that the plant worked efficiently and delivered raw materials and human resources on time. Production of the x-400 could not be carried out Halewood. Outsourcing companies of internal and external materials including maintenance, energy supply and waste management were involved. The tender for the new logistics was assigned to the NYK Group. NYK Logistics supply did not end at the warehouse but went straight to the production line. Within the plant, there were 90 routes to the component installation point. A huge financial infusion was made to the massive transformation of the plant. About $ 450 million was spent on the reconstruction program, covering the press shop, bodywork, paint shop, decoration and finals, as well as the administration building, and the workforce began to believe in change. Demonstrating the changes and their significance at the plant meant that management had to show the evidence needed to motivate the unions.

Changes at the plant occurred in two stages. The first shift took care of the physical needs of employees in high-quality production. The second shift took care of changes at the level of new technologies. Within six months, the new technology was developed and implemented by Jaguar in collaboration with NYK Logistics to fit the overall structure of Ford’s global manufacturing methodology. Combining the first and second shifts at the plant, Paul Johnson, mechanical engineering manager, said briefly: “We tried to focus on the individual, his role and what he had to do to deliver a quality product, ”The success of a plant change can be attributed to the application of the theory of spending more time in a group and implementing all planned facilities. Effective organizational changes were achieved through teams and working groups, rather than individuals.

Culture

Jaguar / Halewood is an example of the Shane model in the Dynamic and Open System group approach, respectively, to its workforce policy. To accelerate cultural change, a consulting firm, Senn Delaney Leadership, was hired to specialize in industrial relations. The “Halewood Difference” theory was designed and introduced. The learning process included teamwork, respect in the team, as well as quality and customer orientation. Training participants were able to interact with each other, including Hudson, and thereby shape organizational values and culture.

Communication

Hudson has developed various communication strategies, including a regular quarterly communication session with the entire workforce, which informs them about the data, quality indicators, competitors, areas and areas that require. Information flowed down through all levels of the organization in daily, weekly, or monthly sessions. Some of the tools Hudson used are:

• Use of oral communication at various meetings and meetings.
• A newsletter called ‘vision’ was implored to increase the verbal communication strategy

Inspirational glossy headlines were periodically distributed to groups that forced the work force to read them with excitement and hope for their future in the organization. In addition, other forms of written communication were used in Jaguar / Halewood to send documents and other important materials to interest parties. Modern ways of business communication to a great extent complement verbal communication with a faster form of written communication, such as e-mail, video conferencing and multi-channel telephone calls.

• After Hudson was convinced that the work force was prone to internal communications, he switched to external communication aimed at quality and customer satisfaction.
• One of the methods of communication was non-verbal communication, it is a smile, gestures, and some other gestures and body movements that send positive messages to clients or between employees.
• Trainings and meetings.

Leadership and Management styles

In the transformation of Jaguar / Halewood, the charismatic leader Hudson played a leading role. Its management expanded and increased the interest of the workforce and caused an awareness of “goals and objectives” and prompted workers to go beyond their own interests for the benefit of the organization. Transformational leaders, such as Hudson, are individually attentive, that is, they pay close attention to differences among their employees; they act as mentors for those who need help for growth and development. Intellectual stimulation of employees is another factor of transformational leadership, demonstrated by Hudson. As a leader in the field of transformation, Hudson was able to transform the state of Jaguar / Halewood from the shackles of dying labor and old cars into a modern automotive organization with a lean management team. Hudson created the wealth and global status of Jaguar / Halewood from vision, initiative, emphasis on hard work and a particular organizational culture with strict codes of morality and learning, as well as effective communication management.

As a result of Hudson’s transformational leadership, the planned changes were successfully implemented, the production of 100, 000 cars per year, the launch of the X-400 on schedule, a successful change in the culture and efficiency of the workforce, and finally Ford Escort vans ordered (before the capture of Jaguar), were completed on schedule.

Like any change management process, the Jaguar / Halewood transformation experience has proven challenging. There was no quick fix, there was a need for all variables, as well as continuous management of the whole process. And despite having achieved success in the set changes, Jaguar / Halewood goes further. The transition to Halewood was the culmination of many processes: which led to a highly efficient culture among the workforce, attention to detail, which subsequently changed the quality of the product and increased customer satisfaction.