Governance, Portfolio, and Project Management Practices at Ford Motors

This project report provides a comprehensive analysis of Ford Motor Company's governance, portfolio, and project management practices. It begins with an executive summary outlining the company's history, current challenges, and future directions, including its focus on autonomous and electric vehicles. The report details Ford's board functions, processes, and key personnel, emphasizing the importance of strategic alignment between projects and corporate strategies. It explores the company's portfolio and program management structure, including the role of PMOs, and discusses governance of individual projects and engagement with stakeholders. The report also covers the methods for reinforcing the link between project and corporate strategies, the company's mission, objectives, and tactics, and potential changes to meet consumer expectations. This report is based on the provided assignment solution and provides valuable insights into Ford's operational and strategic approaches.

A
PROJECT RESEARCH
REPORT
ON
GOVERNANCE, PORTFOLIO
AND
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PRACTICES
AT
FORD MOTORS COMPANY
BY
STUDENT NAME
STUDENT ROLL NO
TO
TUTOR NAME
NAME OF THE UNIVERSITY

AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY: FORD MOTORS COMPANY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In this file we will study about the formation, history and procedure for management of Ford
Motor Company and its ventures. The challenges faced by the company, to meet customer
needs with the change in the era of new and advanced technology. The consumers of new era
needs the cars with high end technology equipped with artificial intelligence. The Ford
Motors also termed as “The King”, according to the innovations made in the automotive
sector is now focusing to unravel the new series of cars; the company is working on, the cars
to be driven unmanned. Also a new range of cars; the electric cars, are being worked on and
will hit the market on global platform in the near year. This file will also discuss about the
portfolio of the company, the process of the board members, the management hierarchy,
methods of business planning, implementation of management rules and procedure for the
application of good governance. Detail of some of the board members; their position in the
company are enlisted too. The method of reinforcing the link between project and corporate
strategies is a sign of good management. Also provide guiding principles for the
implementation of good governance for the individual projects and engagement of
stakeholders in the project. Finally the changes that could be made to live up to the
expectation of the current consumers need.
BASIC INFORMATION
FORD MOTORS, an esteemed name in the American automotive company founded by
Henry Ford in 1903 and his partner investors. The company reinstated in1919 acquiring full
ownership by Henry Ford’s wife and son and later on formed Ford Foundation in 1936. It is
headquartered at Dearborn, Michigan. The very first car made by Henry Ford was built
behind his home in 1896 in Detroit. After setup of Ford motor industry, first motor vehicle
was assembled in 1903. Five years later, huge success of vehicle model T (figure 1) was
prepared for mass production, the company’s first batch assembly line was installed in
Kansas City, Missouri in 1911.

Figure 1: Ford Model T 1909 (HISTORY, 2009)
Ford had acquired several companies later like Jaguar, Aston Martin, Hertz Corporation,
Volvo (automotive division), Land Rover and some shares of Mazda Motor Corporation in
19th and 20th century. But as the company struggled in 21st century it started selling out some
of its brands like Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover which are now owned by TATA
MOTORS LTD (INDIA).
In early 21st century several automotive companies faced financial crises, at the presidency of
George W. Bush, an emergency rescue plan was started to aid the big three automobile
industry of America by the sum of around $13.4 billion. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019) In
late 21st century, the company evolved its technologies to set up new standards in the world,
development of hybrid cars, electric cars, cost effective and powerful cars for the average
earners. It also introduced new terminologies and systems to make the cars more safe and
automatic (unmanned vehicle systems).
BOARD FUNCTIONS AND PROCESSES
Ford’s aspiration is to become most loved and trusted brand in automotive sector worldwide
by designing customer centric vehicles with advancement in technology and safety. The plan

for value creation is enriched on the basis of 4 pillars: to develop wining portfolio, to create
multiple propulsion choices, design an autonomous technology and to endeavour mobility
experiences (Corporate Governance Review, 2019). It focuses on risk management,
sustainability and governance practices. It has an audit committee to inspect every procedure
and check for sustainability, innovation, compensations and finance strategies and working. It
also does day to day scaling of business units, skill teams, products, strategies and the people
working in the organisation.
The Functions of SPM, PMM and EPC are illustrated as follows:
 In SPM in order to provide strategic direction, it is required to take strategic initiatives
& better plans and develop better business and product strategies.
 PMM requires rendering product program approvals and product program execution
systematic approach.
 EPC determines, enforces and encourages leadership qualities as well as human
resource policies (Kakabadse, Goyal and Kakabadse, 2018).
Board of Directors
Business Plan and Special Attention Review-
abbreviated as BPR and SAR simultaneously
Four points to render
 Make a Plan
 Forecast
 Risks & Opportunities
 Special Attention
Strategic Programming
Meeting (SPM)
Product Matters Meeting
(PMM)
Executive Personnel
Committee (EPC)

In the practises of governance the company conduct election for directors every year
following majority vote system, also have separate chairman of board and committees. A
special privilege is given to the shareholders to call for special meeting when needed and also
take action by written consent. An independent team for audit, grievances, compensation and
governance is elected to resolve all issues on day to day basis, following strong codes of
ethics is mandatory. The company practices robust and sound governance under guidance of
highly qualified and independent board by accentuation on sustainability of overall strategies
and function.
Top management personalities of Ford Motor Company, William Clay Ford Jr.; the
Executive Chairman and Jim Hackett; the President and Chief Executive Officer and some of
the members of the board of directors are Stephen G. Butler, Kimberly A. Casiano, Anthony
F. Earley, Jr., William W. Helman IV, William E. Kennard, John C. Lechleiter (PH.D.), Beth
Mooney, John L. Thornton, Lynn Vojvodich, John Veihmeyer, John S. Weinberg headed by
Edsel B.Ford II (Media.ford.com, 2019). Some of the company officers of Ford Motor
Company are Mitch Bainwol (Chief Government Relations Officer), Jim Baumbick (Vice
President, Enterprise Product Line Management), Moray Callum (Vice President, Design,
Ford Motor Company), Linda Cash (Vice President, Quality & New Model Launch
Program), Bill Dirksen (Vice President, Labor Affairs), Lisa Drake (Vice President) Global
Powertrain and Purchasing Operations), Joy Falotico (President, The Lincoln Motor
Company, and Ford Chief Marketing Officer), James D. Farley, Jr. (President, New
Businesses, Technology & Strategy) and many more (Media.ford.com, 2019).
LINKING OF PROJECT AND CORPORATE STRATEGIES
This approach is taken to practise project management skills in business strategies
implementation for increased productivity and quality on long term basis. The linking of
project management to business or corporate strategies is based on three terminologies:
Conceptual Foundation; provides conceptual and theoretical edifice for evaluation of strategic
alignment, Empirical Verification; examines earlier produced edifice to examine original
hypothesis and Beyond the Framework; analyses the 11 similar aspects in 18 successful
projects (Shenhar et al., 2007). The strategic alignment emphasizes on operational efficiency,
team leadership and account strategies following the project planning attributes to render

success in the projects, success of a company is directly impacted by the success of the
project (Biørn and Saeed, 2014).
If a project manager understands the connection between the project and the effects of project
on business is pivotal, at that level the manager can develop an effective environment for that
project’s success, leads to the success of the company (Englund & Graham, 1999). It is very
important for the success of an organization to ensure the cooperation of the employees as
well as management. In many companies the projects fails, due to enfeebled nature of the
organization’s culture. Attitude of top management of any organization also affects the
targets of the projects in hand; lose attitude leads to failure while positive attitude leads the
project towards success path. If the higher officials are not focused then the executives will
not give there 100% effort on the project (Stare, 2012).
Corporate strategies are framed according to the market, company and the type of business in
accordance to the project management terminologies that consolidates the management of
cash flows, resource management, material facilitation and time management (Markgraf,
n.d.).
PORTFOLIO, PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND PMO’S
The Ford Australia is a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company and was founded in 1925 at
Geelong, Victoria. Ford Australia is the largest automotive industry in Australia with more
than 2000 staff members consisting of engineers, designers, and automotive specialists (Ford
Australia, 2019). The team of designers in Australia had developed award winning designs
like the Everest SUV and the Ford Ranger pickup. The portfolio of Ford Motor’s
organizational structure is explained in figure 2 (Prokhorov, 2017).
For all procedural and responsibility wise structure of the company; Ford Motors, consider
figure 3, states different departments (Kahn, 2017). The company works on the basic four
pillars to attain good governance in the program facilitation: Mission, Objectives, Strategies
and Tactics with a clear vision of company’s goal. The mission of the company is to keep on
innovating in spite of getting failed or harmed, never to stop.

Figure 2: Portfolio Organizational Structure; Ford Motor Company
The mission or vision of the founder Henry Ford can be understood from the statement:
"People working together as a lean, global enterprise to make people’s lives better through
automotive and mobility leadership." (Farfan, 2019). The objective of the company is to
achieve high standards of performance beating competitions and complete customer
satisfaction (Thompson, 2019). Ford works with smart leadership and technology and aims
towards being the best in the world of mobility companies with new innovation, enforcing its
teams in production of artificial intelligence based unmanned vehicle system and electric cars
(Pratap, 2019). The tactics of Ford Motor Company is very simple as stated they love to make
20,000 men prosperous and wealthy rather than making slaves and earn millions for the
company (Wall, 2017).

Figure 3: Departmental portfolio
Product management, a method of managing all aspects of producing a product by
consideration and implementation of methods like resource management, cost-time-quality
management, reliability of product, risk modelling and handling, managing teams and their
challenges, usage of newer technologies for production, simulation and analysis, etc. (The
Journal of Modern Project Management, 2019). The main aspect for using project
management is to utilise the knowledge and experience in requisite performance needs and
producing more efficient products and their production quality (Klein and Müller, 2019).
PMO’s is a project management office, a place in the organization to help them provide value
to the projects and programs of the shareholders. On the basis of Project Management
research, 85% companies have PMO in 2016, along with the 30% companies enrolled in the
roll of PMO (Miller, 2017). After 1990, Ford motors, focused on production of sport utility

vehicles could not meet the demand for crossover utility vehicle (CUV), a change in the
consumers need on huge scale, had to change with the blooming change in the market,
decided and implemented the use of PMO’s. The Ford developed its first CUV in 2003, the
EDGE, involving a lot of money and manpower to sustain the abrupt changes in the needs of
the users (Fister Gale, 2007).
GOVERNANCE OF INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS
A management is processed according to the predefined structures and bodies as PMO’s and
project control committee while governance is produced by implementation of five
governance function by coordination, stasis and integration. The five functions of
management as illustrated in the book on industrial administration by Henri Foyal, are to
prognosticate and program for the challenges in the project, organise, command, coordinate
and control the environment for excelling the project. The five codes for good governance of
individual projects are: To exercise the goals of the organisation through systematic planning,
To exercise the ethics of the organisation by evolving sustainability and engagement of
stakeholders along with following ethical codes of business, To produce the culture of the
organisation to be innovative and sensible in risk taking, Ensuring acquiescence by the
organisation with compliance of regulatory and statutory bodies and To evolve the
parameters for implementing the governance framework (BOURNE, 2014).
ENGAGEMENT WITH STAKEHOLDERS
The process of engagement could be followed with consideration of communication to
engage and influence, planning for enriched benefits, maintaining goodwill, anticipation of
hazards with simple monitoring methods, managing risk for stakeholders, compromise to
attain relative expectations, acknowledge success of the community and take responsibilities
for engagement of stakeholder with right approach of communication (Apm.org.uk, n.d.).
The initiation of the process of engagement is to examine the involvement of stakeholder for
the need of cost effective and efficient activities. Analyse the explanation, boon and
systematic arrangement with consideration; who to engage, what are the scopes, time and
effort required and availability of resources. The usage of five level engagement scales is
beneficial for both the stakeholder and the company (Grosvenor Public Sector Advisory,
2019), consider figure 4.

Figure 4: Five level engagement scale
As the engagement of the stakeholders with the projects is necessary to enrich the growth of
both the stakeholder and the company, all possible factors illustrated above should be
considered. For better engagement of stakeholders, detailed study report should be provided
to them along with the instructions to be followed. It is very essential to have clarification on
the technical, management, physical and financial aspects of every project. The active

engagement can help both the stakeholder and the producer save time, effort and money
produce exact required product.
NEW ADDITIONAL STRUCTURES AND PRACTICES TO BE IMPLEMENTED
The external study shows that Ford Motor Australia faced extensive level of problems like
the fine of $10 million imposed for not fixing the dodgy transmission in over 10 thousand
cars. The exercise of sustainability should be encouraged with lean management system. The
Ford Australia should also work on the basic fields like the effective communication in the
system, maintaining profound cooperate environment, usage of advanced technologies after
giving proper training to the employees, adequate resource management, provide requisite
information manual for all the task assigned independently or in team. The major challenges
for the automotive industries are to sustain the current requirement scenario compiled with
the new generation technology and the ability to upgrade to future generation technologies
with clean and green energy motive with the help of artificial intelligence.
As we acknowledged from studying enormous reports on Ford Motor Company, the
challenges it faced and the innovation to be done. The company should implement safety
parameters like ABS (Anti Braking System), Traction control, air bags and GPS system to be
mandatory for every vehicle. An automated computerised system is to be used to indicate and
warn the driver of the vehicles to follow road safety protocols and obey all instructions. As
the ford motors already developed the system to render driverless service in some areas
which is to be brought in the market soon. The company should be very careful in presenting
these types of products in the market, as for some reasons the technology is boon as well as
bane.
As with this advanced technology and everything to be electronically controlled, the risk of
being hacked is more often increasing. So the company needs to work and build an effective
defence mechanism to counter the unwanted hacks that could happen. The advanced sensors
for the application of road safety should be tested for all the possibilities as human safety is
must in any vehicle. At last the company needs to work on the service parameters and satisfy
all the needs of the customer by providing on-time road side assistance, complete zero depth
coverage of the machineries and fast track problem analysing and solving to make customers
happy.

REFERENCES
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