Download or read book Wrecked written by Joshua Murray and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, automobile manufacturing was the largest, most profitable industry in the United States and residents of industry hubs like Detroit and Flint, Michigan had some of the highest incomes in the country. Over the last half-century, the industry has declined, and American automakers now struggle to stay profitable. How did the most prosperous industry in the richest country in the world crash and burn? In Wrecked, sociologists Joshua Murray and Michael Schwartz offer an unprecedented historical-sociological analysis of the downfall of the auto industry. Through an in-depth examination of labor relations and the production processes of automakers in the U.S. and Japan both before and after World War II, they demonstrate that the decline of the American manufacturers was the unintended consequence of their attempts to weaken the bargaining power of their unions. Today Japanese and many European automakers produce higher quality cars at lower cost than their American counterparts thanks to a flexible form of production characterized by long-term sole suppliers, assembly and supply plants located near each other, and just-in-time delivery of raw materials. While this style of production was, in fact, pioneered in the U.S. prior to World War II, in the years after the war, American automakers deliberately dismantled this system. As Murray and Schwartz show, flexible production accelerated innovation but also facilitated workers’ efforts to unionize plants and carry out work stoppages. To reduce the efficacy of strikes and combat the labor militancy that flourished between the Depression and the postwar period, the industry dispersed production across the nation, began maintaining large stockpiles of inventory, and eliminated single sourcing. While this restructuring of production did ultimately reduce workers’ leverage, it also decreased production efficiency and innovation. The U.S. auto industry has struggled ever since to compete with foreign automakers, and formerly thriving motor cities have suffered the consequences of mass deindustrialization. Murray and Schwartz argue that new business models that reinstate flexible production and prioritize innovation rather than cheap labor could stem the outsourcing of jobs and help revive the auto industry. By clarifying the historical relationships between production processes, organized labor, and industrial innovation, Wrecked provides new insights into the inner workings and decline of the U.S. auto industry.

Download or read book America s Other Automakers written by Timothy J. Minchin and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2018 almost half of all vehicles made in North America were produced at foreign-owned plants, and the sector was on track to monopolize the market. Despite this, the industry has been overlooked compared with its domestic counterpart, both in scholarship and popular memory. Redressing this neglect, America’s Other Automakers provides a new history of the foreignowned auto sector, the first to extensively draw on archival sources and to articulate the human agency of participants, including workers, managers, and industry recruiters. Timothy J. Minchin challenges the view that the industry’s growth primarily reflected incentives, stressing human agency and the complexity of individual stories instead. Deeply human in its approach, the book also explores the industry’s impact on grassroots communities, showing that it had more costs than supporters acknowledged. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, America’s Other Automakers uncovers significant tensions over unionization, reports of discriminatory hiring, and unease about the industry’s rapid growth, critically exploring seven large assembly facilities and their impact on the communities in which they were built.

Download or read book The U S Automobile Manufacturing Industry written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Comeback written by Paul Ingrassia and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Comeback, Pulitzer Prize-winners Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White take us to the boardrooms, the executive offices, and the shop floors of the auto business to reconstruct, in riveting detail, how America's premier industry stumbled, fell, and picked itself up again. The story begins in 1982, when Honda started building cars in Marysville, Ohio, and the entire U.S. car industry seemed to be on the brink of extinction. It ends just over a decade later, with a remarkable turn of the tables, as Japan's car industry falters and America's Big Three emerge as formidable global competitors. Comeback is a story propelled by larger-than-life characters -- Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford II, Don Petersen, Roger Smith, among many others -- and their greed, pride, and sheer refusal to face facts. But it is also a story full of dedicated, unlikely heroes who struggled to make the Big Three change before it was too late.

Download or read book Materials Design and Manufacturing for Lightweight Vehicles written by P.K. Mallick and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research into the manufacture of lightweight automobiles is driven by the need to reduce fuel consumption to preserve dwindling hydrocarbon resources without compromising other attributes such as safety, performance, recyclability and cost. Materials, design and manufacturing for lightweight vehicles will make it easier for engineers to not only learn about the materials being considered for lightweight automobiles, but also to compare their characteristics and properties.Part one discusses materials for lightweight automotive structures with chapters on advanced steels for lightweight automotive structures, aluminium alloys, magnesium alloys for lightweight powertrains and automotive structures, thermoplastics and thermoplastic matrix composites and thermoset matrix composites for lightweight automotive structures. Part two reviews manufacturing and design of lightweight automotive structures covering topics such as manufacturing processes for light alloys, joining for lightweight vehicles, recycling and lifecycle issues and crashworthiness design for lightweight vehicles.With its distinguished editor and renowned team of contributors, Materials, design and manufacturing for lightweight vehicles is a standard reference for practicing engineers involved in the design and material selection for motor vehicle bodies and components as well as material scientists, environmental scientists, policy makers, car companies and automotive component manufacturers. - Provides a comprehensive analysis of the materials being used for the manufacture of lightweight vehicles whilst comparing characteristics and properties - Examines crashworthiness design issues for lightweight vehicles and further emphasises the development of lightweight vehicles without compromising safety considerations and performance - Explores the manufacturing process for light alloys including metal forming processes for automotive applications

Download or read book Manufacturing System and Process Development for Vehicle Assembly written by He Tang and published by SAE International. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution and execution of automotive manufacturing are explored in this fundamental manual. It is an excellent reference for entry level manufacturing engineers and also serves as a training guide for nonmanufacturing professionals. The book covers the major areas of vehicle assembly manufacturing and addresses common approaches and procedures of the development process. Having held positions as both a University Professor and as a Lead Engineering Specialist in industry, the author draws on his experience in both theory and application to fill the gap between academic research and industrial practices. This concisely written, comprehensive review discusses the sophisticated principles and concepts of automotive manufacturing from development to applications and includes: 250 illustrations and 90 tables. End-of-chapter review questions. Research topics for in-depth case studies, literature reviews, and/or course projects. Analytical problems for additional practice. Directly extracted and summarized from automotive manufacturing practices, this book serves as an essential manual. The subject is complemented by the author’s first book, Automotive Vehicle Assembly Processes and Operations Management, which provides even greater depth to the complex endeavor of modern automotive manufacturing.

Download or read book Supply Chain and Logistics Management Concepts Methodologies Tools and Applications written by Management Association, Information Resources and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 2148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business practices are constantly evolving in order to meet growing customer demands. Evaluating the role of logistics and supply chain management skills or applications is necessary for the success of any organization or business. As market competition becomes more aggressive, it is crucial to evaluate ways in which a business can maintain a strategic edge over competitors. Supply Chain and Logistics Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that centers on the effective management of risk factors and the implementation of the latest supply management strategies. It also explores the field of digital supply chain optimization and business transformation. Highlighting a range of topics such as inventory management, competitive advantage, and transport management, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for business managers, supply chain managers, business professionals, academicians, researchers, and upper-level students in the field of supply chain management, operations management, logistics, and operations research.

Download or read book Knowledge Transfer in the Automobile Industry written by Dessy Irawati and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a detailed theoretical framework and a case study on how FDI in the form of knowledge transfer from overseas MNEs contributes to the upgrading of regional manufacturing clusters. Although regional clusters have been the subject of many books, this book is one of the few that explicitly links regional clusters to global networks. It explains how being part of global networks can both facilitate and hinder the development of a regional cluster.

Download or read book The Changing U S Auto Industry written by James M. Rubenstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years car production in the United States has undergone changes on a scale unknown since the pioneering era prior to World War One. New plants have been opened in the interior of the country, while most of those located along the east and west coast have been closed. The Changing U.S. Auto Industry uses concepts drawn from geography, such as access to markets and shipments of parts, to understand some of the reasons for the recent changes. Also critical is the changing role of labour in the production process, including the search by Japanese firms for a union-free environment, the re-location of some production to Mexico and the debate over the appropriate level of union-management cooperation.

Download or read book The Yugo written by Jason Vuic and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo was a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. By 2000, NPR's Car Talk declared it "the worst car of the millennium." And for most Americans that's where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand "good" communists, a willing U.S. State Department, the shortsighted Detroit auto industry, and improvident bankers, shake vigorously, and you've got The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History. Brilliantly re-creating the amazing confluence of events that produced the Yugo, Yugoslav expert Jason Vuic uproariously tells the story of the car that became an international joke: The American CEO who happens upon a Yugo right when his company needs to find a new import or go under. A State Department eager to aid Yugoslavia's nonaligned communist government. Zastava Automobiles, which overhauls its factory to produce an American-ready Yugo in six months. And a hole left by Detroit in the cheap subcompact market that creates a race to the bottom that leaves the Yugo . . . at the bottom.

Download or read book Port Economics Management and Policy written by Theo Notteboom and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Port Economics, Management and Policy provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary port industry, showing how ports are organized to serve the global economy and support regional and local development. Structured in eight sections plus an introduction and epilog, this textbook examines a wide range of seaport topics, covering maritime shipping and international trade, port terminals, port governance, port competition, port policy and much more. Key features of the book include: Multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on economics, geography, management science and engineering Multisector analysis including containers, bulk, break-bulk and the cruise industry Focus on the latest industry trends, such as supply chain management, automation, digitalization and sustainability Benefitting from the authors’ extensive involvement in shaping the port sector across five continents, this text provides students and scholars with a valuable resource on ports and maritime transport systems. Practitioners and policymakers can also use this as an essential guide towards better port management and governance.

Download or read book Where Is My Flying Car written by J. Storrs Hall and published by Stripe Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an engineer and futurist, an impassioned account of technological stagnation since the 1970s and an imaginative blueprint for a richer, more abundant future The science fiction of the 1960s promised us a future remade by technological innovation: we’d vacation in geodesic domes on Mars, have meaningful conversations with computers, and drop our children off at school in flying cars. Fast-forward 60 years, and we’re still stuck in traffic in gas-guzzling sedans and boarding the same types of planes we flew in over half a century ago. What happened to the future we were promised? In Where Is My Flying Car?, J. Storrs Hall sets out to answer this deceptively simple question. What starts as an examination of the technical limitations of building flying cars evolves into an investigation of the scientific, technological, and social roots of the economic stagnation that started in the 1970s. From the failure to adopt nuclear energy and the suppression of cold fusion technology to the rise of a counterculture hostile to progress, Hall recounts how our collective ambitions for the future were derailed, with devastating consequences for global wealth creation and distribution. Hall then outlines a framework for a future powered by exponential progress—one in which we build as much in the world of atoms as we do in the world of bits, one rich in abundance and wonder. Drawing on years of original research and personal engineering experience, Where Is My Flying Car?, originally published in 2018, is an urgent, timely analysis of technological progress over the last 50 years and a bold vision for a better future.

Download or read book Meeting the Challenge written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book America s Assembly Line written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Model T to today's "lean manufacturing": the assembly line as crucial, yet controversial, agent of social and economic transformation. The mechanized assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin's little tramp trying to keep up with a factory conveyor belt.) In America's Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century. The assembly line—developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts—first created and then served an expanding mass market. It also transformed industrial labor. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of “lean manufacturing”; American industry reluctantly adopted the new approach. Nye describes this evolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrial jobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford's pioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainable manufacturing.

Download or read book Once Upon a Car written by Bill Vlasic and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once Upon a Car is the brilliantly reported inside-the-boardrooms-and-factories story of Detroit’s fight for survival, going beyond the headlines to chronicle how the country’s Big Three auto companies—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—teetered on the brink of collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. In a tale that reads like a corporate thriller, Bill Vlasic, who has covered the auto industry for more than fifteen years, first for the Detroit News and now for the New York Times, takes readers into the executive offices, assembly plants, and union halls to introduce a cast of memorable characters, many of whom are speaking out for the first time, including the executives who struggled to save their companies but in the end had to seek a controversial, last-gasp rescue from the U.S. government. Vlasic goes behind the scenes to portray the men at the top during Detroit’s last stand. Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, tried to turn around a dying company, only to be forced to resign as a condition of the government bailout. Bill Ford, great-grandson of the legendary Henry Ford, had the will to keep Ford alive but needed the guts to hire an unknown outsider, Alan Mulally, to transform the company before it crashed. At Chrysler, leadership was constantly changing as new owners tried in vain to fix the smallest of the beleaguered Big Three. And through it all, the president of the United Auto Workers union, Ron Gettelfinger, fought to save the jobs of the men and women who build American-made cars and trucks. This tale of an iconic industry in crisis is more than a big business drama and provides a rich, unvarnished portrait of how Detroit’s decline affected tens of thousands of workers and dozens of communities nationwide. The story moves from the gleaming corporate skyscrapers and massive auto plants to the halls of the U.S. Congress and into the Oval Office, where President Obama and his aides wrestled with how to keep General Motors and Chrysler from going out of business. Vlasic shows why the bailout worked, and how Detroit can succeed under new leadership and build automobiles equal to any in the world. Once Upon a Car tells a uniquely American tale of success, failure, and redemption. It is an important and illuminating chapter in an astonishing story that is still unfolding. And no one is more qualified to write it than Bill Vlasic.

Download or read book The Automobile and American Life 2d ed written by John Heitmann and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now revised and updated, this book tells the story of how the automobile transformed American life and how automotive design and technology have changed over time. It details cars' inception as a mechanical curiosity and later a plaything for the wealthy; racing and the promotion of the industry; Henry Ford and the advent of mass production; market competition during the 1920s; the development of roads and accompanying highway culture; the effects of the Great Depression and World War II; the automotive Golden Age of the 1950s; oil crises and the turbulent 1970s; the decline and then resurgence of the Big Three; and how American car culture has been represented in film, music and literature. Updated notes and a select bibliography serve as valuable resources to those interested in automotive history.

Download or read book The Machine That Changed the World written by James P. Womack and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-12-09 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos wrote THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD in 1990, Japanese automakers, and Toyota in particular, were making a strong showing by applying the principles of lean production. However, the full power of lean principles was unproven, and they had not been applied outside of the auto industry. Today, the power of lean production has been conclusively proved by Toyota's unparalleled success, and the concepts have been widely applied in many industries. Based on MIT's pioneering global study of industrial competition, THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD offers a groundbreaking analysis of the entire lean business system, including product development, supplier management, sales, service, and production - an analysis even more relevant today as GM and Ford struggle to survive and a wide range of British abd American companies embrace lean production. A new Foreword by the authors brings the story up to date and details how their predictions were right. As a result, this reissue of a classic is as insightful and instructive today as when it was first published.