My Years With General Motors

My Years With General Motors
Author: Alfred P Sloan
Publisher: eNet Press
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2015-01-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1618863991

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. led the General Motors Corporation to international business success by virtue of his brilliant managerial practices and his insights into the new consumer economy he and General Motors helped to produce. Sloan's business biography, My Years With General Motors, was an instant best seller when it was first published in 1964 and is still considered indispensable reading by modern business giants.

What is Good for General Motors?

What is Good for General Motors?
Author: Thomas A. Crumm
Publisher: Algora Publishing
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0875867774

Tom Crumm thinks the American auto industry can regain the world leadership it once enjoyed in design, manufacturing and sales of world-class quality vehicles — and profitability. There are nearly a million American jobs at stake and when the ideas in this book spread to component and other industries it becomes fuel for discussion of a turnaround of America's industrial sector and a turnaround of the economy. General Motor's CEO Roger Smith was a visionary and fully realized that change was needed at GM. Tom Crumm played a vital role in the rethinking that was to help the company steer a new course; as a strategic planner he was deeply involved in the creation of the Saturn project in 1985. Many lessons may be learned from Saturn's rise and fall that could be used to further the understanding of how the American manufacturing sector can be restored to its world class position. These include: - corporate culture and leadership, or the lack of it - the integration of technology and workers - employee empowerment and labor relations - supplier relations and vertical integration - and sales philosophy and customer satisfaction The biggest threat to a worker's job is an unprofitable company. Accordingly, the adversarial relationship with the company was not in the best long term interest of union members. The union had to change as well as the company. This point and the whole discussion will be of compelling interest to all who want to know what happened to America's auto making capability. Others have recently tried to explain what went wrong in the auto industry. 'Crash Course' by Paul Ingrassia, for instance, shows that the author had extraordinary access to behind-the-scenes meetings and conversations -- but he has little to say about engineering, manufacturing, or product development. This book addresses just those practical areas where productive change can be made.

If Aristotle Ran General Motors

If Aristotle Ran General Motors
Author: Tom Morris
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2013-12-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1466860804

What does classical philosophy have to offer modern business? Nothing less than the secrets to building great morale and productivity in any size organization. This is the message that Tom Morris will deliver this year to thousands of executives of leading companies such as Merrill Lynch, Coca Cola, Bayer, and Northwestern Mutual Life. In If Aristotle Ran General Motors, Morris, who taught philosophy at Notre Dame for fifteen years, shares the knowledge that he garnered from a lifetime of studying the writings and teachings of history's wisest thinkers and shows how to apply their ideas in today's business environment. Although he frequently draws on the wisdom of Aristotle, Morris also finds inspiration in the teachings of a wide array of thinkers from many different traditions and eras. Throughout these pages we're invited to pause and consider the words of Confucius, Seneca, Saint Augustine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, and many others. By looking at the inside workings of various kinds of businesses-- from GE to Tom's of Maine-- Morris shows why any company that is serious about attaining true excellence must adhere to four timeless virtues first identified by Aristotle more than two thousand years ago: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity. Morris makes clear that the most successful companies encourage a corporate culture that ensures that all interactions among colleagues, employees, management, bosses, clients, customers, and suppliers are infused with dignity and humanity. Moreover, the book provides clearly stated strategies for how everyone who works can make these qualities the foundation for their everyday business (and personal) lives. If Aristotle Ran General Motors presents the most compelling case of any book yet written for a new ethics in business and for a workplace where openness and integrity are the rule rather than the exception. It offers an optimistic vision for the future of leadership and a plan for reinvigorating the soul back into our professional lives.

Why GM Matters

Why GM Matters
Author: William Holstein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2010-09-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0802777732

In November, GM CEO Rick Wagoner appeared before Congress to ask for $25 billion to bail out the struggling Big Three automakers. To critics like Thomas Freidman and Mitt Romney, it was a sign that the American auto industry should be led out to pasture; if the Japanese are better at making cars, they said, then we should let them do it. To defenders, the loss of the country's largest manufacturing sector would be an incomprehensible disaster. Nearly every day, the debate rages on the op-ed pages. Billions of dollars and millions of jobs hang in the balance. In Why GM Matters, William Holstein goes deep inside GM to show what's really happening at the country's most iconic corporation. Where critics say that GM has sat on its hands while the market changed, Holstein demonstrates that GM has already radically retooled its entire operation, from manufacturing and cost structure to design. Where pundits say we'd be better off without GM, he shows how inextricably linked GM and the nation's economy still are: The country's largest private buyer of IT, the world's largest buyer of steel, the holder of pensions for 780,000 Americans, GM accounts for a full 1 percent of our country's GDP. A dollar spent on GM has profoundly different consequences from a dollar spent on Toyota. Following a diverse cast of characters-from Rick Wagoner, the controversial CEO, to design director Bob Boniface, to Linda Flowers, a team leader on the line in Kansas City-Holstein examines the state of GM's health and builds a persuasive argument that GM is essential to our nation's well-being and, with the right economic climate, ready to compete with Toyota as one of the biggest global automakers.

Lean Hospitals

Lean Hospitals
Author: Mark Graban
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2016-06-30
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1138031585

Organizations around the world are using Lean to redesign care and improve processes in a way that achieves and sustains meaningful results for patients, staff, physicians, and health systems. Lean Hospitals, Third Edition explains how to use the Lean methodology and mindsets to improve safety, quality, access, and morale while reducing costs, increasing capacity, and strengthening the long-term bottom line. This updated edition of a Shingo Research Award recipient begins with an overview of Lean methods. It explains how Lean practices can help reduce various frustrations for caregivers, prevent delays and harm for patients, and improve the long-term health of your organization. The second edition of this book presented new material on identifying waste, A3 problem solving, engaging employees in continuous improvement, and strategy deployment. This third edition adds new sections on structured Lean problem solving methods (including Toyota Kata), Lean Design, and other topics. Additional examples, case studies, and explanations are also included throughout the book. Mark Graban is also the co-author, with Joe Swartz, of the book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Frontline Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements, which is also a Shingo Research Award recipient. Mark and Joe also wrote The Executive’s Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.

General Motors

General Motors
Author: Michael W. R. Davis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1999
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 9780738500195

The General Motors Corporation was established in 1908 by William C. Durant, who combined the Buick, Oldsmobile, and Oakland companies and, later, Cadillac, to form GM. From the 1920s onwards, GM grew from a firm that accounted for about 10% of new car sales in the U.S. to become the largest producer of cars and trucks in the world. The peak of the company's power and market dominance came in the 1960s, which proved to be the decade of change for the U.S. auto industry. With the introduction of federal safety regulations and control tailpipe emissions, GM's position as the world's largest industrial corporation changed. Its marketing strategy was undone by competitive challenges, and the business was never to be the same again. General Motors: A Photographic History explores the growth of the company in a series of over 200 black-and-white images. From the first assembly line to post-Second World War recovery, images from the world auto shows and the consequent re-organization of GM take the reader on an intriguing visual tour of a tremendously important era in the industrialization of America.

Sixty to Zero

Sixty to Zero
Author: Alex Taylor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2010-05-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300158882

The collapse of General Motors captured headlines in early 2009, but as Alex Taylor III writes in this in-depth dissection of the automaker's undoing, GM's was a meltdown forty years in the making. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience and insight as an automotive industry reporter, as well as personal relationships with many of the leading players, Taylor reveals the many missteps of GM and its competitors.

American Turnaround

American Turnaround
Author: Edward Whitacre
Publisher: Business Plus
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1455513008

Ed Whitacre is credited with taking over the corporate reins at General Motors (GM) when the automotive manufacturer was on the brink of bankruptcy during 2009 and turned the company around in magnificent fashion. In this business memoir, the native Texan explores his unique management style, business acumen and patriotism. It was President Obama who reached out to Ed Whitacre to come out of retirement and take over GM in 2009. A down-to-earth, no-nonsense Texas native with a distinctive Texas twang in his voice, Whitacre was reluctant to come out of retirement to work at GM. But Whitacre is that rare CEO with great charisma and extraordinary management instincts. And when he got to Detroit, he started to whittle down the corporate bureaucracy right away - and got GM back on track in record time. Before being pulled out of retirement to run GM by Obama, Ed Whitacre had spent his entire corporate career in the telecom business, where he ultimately ended up running AT&T.

Healthcare Kaizen

Healthcare Kaizen
Author: Mark Graban
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2018-06-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 143987297X

Healthcare Kaizen focuses on the principles and methods of daily continuous improvement, or Kaizen, for healthcare professionals and organizations. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means "change for the better," as popularized by Masaaki Imai in his 1986 book Kaizen: The Key to Japan‘s Competitive Success and through the books of Norman Bodek, both o

The Up Side of Down

The Up Side of Down
Author: Megan McArdle
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2014-02-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0698151496

“Clever, surprisingly fast-paced, and enlightening.” —Forbes Most new products fail. So do most businesses. And most of us, if we are honest, have experienced a major setback in our personal or professional lives. So what determines who will bounce back and follow up with a home run? What separates those who keep treading water from those who harness the lessons from their mistakes? One of our most popular business bloggers, Megan McArdle takes insights from emergency room doctors, kindergarten teachers, bankruptcy judges, and venture capitalists to teach us how to reinvent ourselves in the face of failure. The Up Side of Down is a book that just might change the way you lead your life.