Tuesday, January 24, 2006

An Interesting Juxtaposition

Ordinarily it wouldn't have caught my attention, but in the course of less than 24 hours two of the major carmakers announced layoffs in an attempt to maximize profits and minimize losses.

What was interesting in this is that Ford is closing plants and laying off 30,000+ workers, while Daimler is also laying off people -- but in their case it's 6,000 managers.

Those of us who have spent any time at all in manufacturing (and I did my term as a wage slave in several factories in my youth, thank you) won't have to guess which strategy will be successful.

If I were in the market for a new vehicle, guess which manufacturer I would choose.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I used to by fords...

Who owns ford btw?

JBlue said...

Ford is closing a plant in St. Louis, which will, of course, affect a couple of other industries. In other words, lots of unemployment coming our way. D-Chrysler is investing more in the the plant that have here to make it more adaptable to producing different vehicles.