Ford picks Tata as top bidder

Ford picks Tata as top bidder for Jaguar, Land Rover
Updated 10h 21m ago |

DETROIT (AP) — Ford Motor (F) has picked India's Tata Motors as the top bidder to buy Ford's Jaguar and Land Rover units, the U.S. automaker said Thursday.

Ford said it has entered into "focused negotiations at a more detailed level" with Tata, which means Tata has been picked as a preferred bidder for the storied British automakers.


PHOTO GALLERY: Jaguar for sale (from August 2006)

"There is still a considerable amount of work to do, and while no final decision has been made, we will proceed with further substantive discussions with Tata Motors over the forthcoming weeks with a view to securing an agreement that is in the best interests of all parties concerned," said Lewis Booth, executive vice president of Ford's European units.

Jaguar and Land Rover employees in the United Kingdom were told about the negotiations Thursday morning shortly before the company made the announcement.

 

No, it is good news for Ford. They are dumping the money losing assets.

A friend of mine is in Information Technology. He said, Ford does stuff the old fashioned way. They are risk averse to the new technologies...or could be they have a lot of idiots - who wants to live in Detroit?

 

A friend of mine who has superb credentials but has his own company has his resume on Monster and Dice. He gets calls from every major IT company that wanted to hire him including Indian Companies such as Infosys and Satyam. He has never been contacted by TCS.

So, I am thinking, Tata does things the old fashioned way....which can be a problem managing such high profile products. I am not sure if Tata has built and sold any high tech complex products competitively.

 

Doing with old technology and process...the best quotation I can give:

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them! - Albert Einstein

Also see one of the IBM commercials

 

Building new factory can be done anywahere if you have the money. - The easy part

Using new technology is a little difficult because there are many technologies that need to be selected and integrated. That is why companies like Ford, Chrysler and GM have these difficulties. - Somewhat difficult.

Well trained people: This is where things fall apart. Statistically, using Bell curve, you can access only so many good people in a given area. And if you are an Union shop, that also limits who you can hire. So, the quality of help suffers. This is not where one got an A in Books. It is where you need innovative people - Really difficult.

Even if Tata or anybody, takes over the plant, about 90% of the people remain that will continue with the same process (This is the way we have been doing since you were in diapers- mentality). Changing those will be really difficult. The Germans tried that with Chrysler in USA and failed.

The biggest stumbling block is that 10% that defines you and Toyota. It is the Knowledge Management that people talk about but rarely practice. If you take that 10% hit in profit, year after year...you are basically dead. I have worked for Bell South, Corning, Phillips 66 etc. In each case their Knowledge Management includes thousands of reports that are printed over the weekend only to go to recycle bins by noon Monday. In one company, they spent $15 million for a KM program which is nothing but a Datawarehouse. In the project kick off meeting, the CIO or any C-level executive did not show up. That tells how important their KM Program was to the upper management. The supervisor knew that and that rubbed off on the team.

As a result, the vendors who supply the technology also hype it up and companies barely get what they signed up for.