1. In 1995 Ford Motor Company announced a major reorganization called "Ford 2000.\" The idea, championed by Chairman and CEO, Alex Trotman and Chairman Edward E. Hagenlacker, eliminated more than a dozen engineering design centers around the world and consolidated them into only five - four in Dearborn, Michigan, and one in Europe. The one in Europe was responsible for creating one basic design for small cars for the world market and then making minor modifications for local markets. For example, the same template will be used in Europe, South America, and Asia. The four design centers in Dearborn will do the same for large front wheel-drive cars, rear- wheel-drive cars, pick up trucks, and commercial vehicles. The consolidation effort requires that more than twenty-five thousand salaried employees relocate or at least report to new managers. Manufacturing and assembly will still take place in plants around the world. The purpose is to integrate Ford's operations around the world and revolutionize the way it designs and builds more than seventy lines of cars and trucks, which it sells in more than two hundred markets. The goals are reduced duplication of effort, increase volume purchasing, save more than $4 billion per year, and double profitability. All this for a company that made $3.8 billion profit from automotive operations in 1995 and $53billion overall. Trotman continues to have the support of the Ford family, who still controls 40 percent of the voting stock in the company. Part of the new plan is a top-secret strategic document that outlines every new car and truck Ford will design, produce, and sell around the world through 2003. The plan calls for reducing the basic design platforms from 24 to 16 and increasing the total number of models by 50 percent, while saving billions of dollars. For example, the new 1996 Taurus serves as the platform for several other models, both in the United States and around the world. In structure, the new system is really a matrix. Rather than working in a functional organization with traditional hierarchies and centralized decision-making employees are assigned to a design center, such as small cars, and then to a group according to their specialties, such as drive trains. Managers then mediate the disputes that occur between the design centers and the specialties. Employees will have to change their ways of doing their work as they design cars and trucks to fit global markets rather than a single, relatively homogeneous one management knows that employees feel a great deal of insecurity and uncertainty about the company and their jobs as they make the shift. Carrying the message to all employees has been a constant job for Trotman and Hagenlacker since the original announcement, Management also knows that Ford tried a similar design integration with their "World Car" in the late 19705, which failed primarily due to turf battles among designers and engineers. The cars that resulted were rnrnlv fl'ln 1"an cnwnrc Finn-l hnnnrl fnr nnrl Minn: cn rlnll in fl'lnir rlncidn that nn nnn hnlldl'it thnm