Case Presentation Harley

8/6/2019 Case Presentation Harley

1/18

Harley-Davidson History

Harley-Davidson was founded in 1903

Harley-Davidson had become the largest motorcycleproducing company in the world in 1918

Japanese competitors entered the market in 1959, Harley-Davidson executives did noting to counter the advance ofcompetition.

100,000 production target achieved; market share exceeds

60% in the super-heavyweight segment in 1995


2/18

AMF Years

It is quantity of motorcycles vs. quality

Reduce time to introduce new models

Production and Quality Problems

Unskilled workers


3/18

Vaughn Beals

Took over as the CEO of Harley-Davidson afterGott left

He held different ideals than AMF and the topmanagement

AMF began looking for a buyer for Harley-Davidson

With Harley-Davidsons profitability down, Bealsand some other Harley-Davidson managersorchestrated a highly leveraged buyout


4/18

Vaughn Beals

This large amount of debt for the buyout forcedHarley Davidsons managers to adopt a newstrategy: survival

If Harley-Davidson wanted to remain a dominantforce, in the motorcycle market they were going toneed to change


5/18

Change

Forces for Change: Competition

Japanese competitors began coming into the

market and forced Harley-Davidson to change theway they produced motorcycles


6/18

Change in Job Design

The Productivity Triad Harley-Davidsons newapproach to production

Beals and his team realize the only way to compete

with foreign market is to improve quality

Based on Japanese methods of production

Involved: (a) employee involvement (b) use of JIT

inventory (c) statistical operator control (SOC)


7/18


Organizational Structure - Job tasks would bedivided much differently under the productivitytriad

Achange in structure introduced new aspects toan employees day at work


8/18


Employee Involvement - using input ofemployees would increase commitment to success

Participation is key to success in terms of bothproduct quality and production process


9/18

Job Characteristics Model

Autonomy: Line workers were encouraged tomake more decisions during production process

Skill Variety: Instead of focusing on just producing

the product, Beals wanted his employees to becomequality experts. Directly uses the SOC

Task Identity: Employees were responsible for thetangible product, but also the quality aspect


10/18

Creating a Learning Organization

Learning Organization: To keep up with thecompetition, Harley needed to be able to adapt tochange

In the 1990s, HD began emphasizing learning atall levels in the organization through a programcalled the Leadership Institute

Everyone had the potential to learn more

Going against traditional ways of management


11/18

New Design Options

To allow for easy sharing of informationthroughout the organization, team work became anew focus

Team Structure: Eliminated certain senior vicepresident positions, these brought no value to thefirm

Teams replaced these positions


12/18

Chain of command was eliminated

Employees had limitless spans of control

Departments were replaced with teams

Boundaryless Organization


13/18

Employees had a choice to seek training

Learning was emphasized throughout the

organization both employees and topmanagement

Culture outside the firm is also created

Culture


14/18

To master all the skills necessary, to do a qualityjob all the time

Improve product service and the quality ofproducts through team empowerment

Take responsibility and ownership for the product

Always be looking for ways to improve

Merge the thinking with top management and allother employees

Core Values


15/18

Functional Harley-Davidsons new culturecreated lots of opinions which would help themavoid groupthink

Process Harley-Davidson grew internationallyand has subsidiaries throughout Europe

Conflict


16/18

Participative Management Harley-Davidsoneliminated several management positions andinstead gave the responsibilities to teams that were

made up of employees

Merit Based Pay Harley-Davidson introduced apay for performance system to improve quality

Rewarding Employees


17/18

Technical Training Through the LearningOrganization, Harley-Davidson sought to traintheir employees in the latest technologies that were

used in Harleys factories

Types of Training


18/18

Declared dividend as of December 9th, 2008 for$0.33 a share

Harley Davidson museum

http://www.harley-davidson.com

Give back to community at holiday time(donatetoys to needy children)

How Harley Davidson is Today

Case Presentation Harley

Documents

Transcript of Case Presentation Harley