Nissan

Résumé du document

The name NISSAN Motor Co. appeared for the first time in 1934 from a company called Jidosha-Seizo Kabushiki-Kaisha, a combination of several automotive ventures and the Brand DATSUN. Nissan was the pioneer of the development of new automobile technology in the 1970s. It knew a very fast growth thanks to a global program, and by 1991, Nissan was operating very profitably. Nevertheless, in the 1990s, the situation completely changed. And in 1999 the position of the company was described as a catastrophic one: $22 billion of debts, its market shares keep declining, its losses are recurring, its stock exchange vaporization broke down… Three years later, Nissan has taken up benefit again, and the highest values for its stock options were recorded. How have Nissan managed such a turnaround? What were the problems that the company faced in 1999? How Nissan was saved? Which kind of changes did appear in the company?

Extraits

[...] He was convinced that the solutions of Nissan's problems had to came from internal. He rejected preconceived ideas and solutions, that's why he refused any help from consultants. To achieve such a challenge, he acted within a benchmarking approach by understanding what the other companies do and how Nissan operations are functioning, trying to learn from these differences, and then investigating changes. The aim was not to copy but to think differently and to create original thoughts and ideas which can fit with Nissan's situation. [...]

[...] He used reengineering process. Indeed, rethinking and redesigning business processes to increase organizational effectiveness, with a quick delivery of goods, high quality and low costs, was one of his priority. Ghosn decided to break bounds between people, and restructure the company toward cross-functional departments, which each serviced one product line. The staff then gained better visibility of the entire business process and began to focus on total business success and customer satisfaction. One of the challenge of Ghosn was also to make managers responsible. [...]

[...] Moreover, Nissan broke away from the Japanese cultural norms of Keiretsu investment. The company managed to maintain its customer-supplier relationships and regained billions in tied up capital. The number of suppliers was reduce from 2,000 to 600 which were easier to handle and enables Nissan to take advantage of economies of scale. In addition, Nissan made high investments in and tried to be more customer-oriented in the designs of its products new models were created in few years, and efforts were made in advertising to improve Nissan's brand image. [...]

[...] In addition the company faced a real communication problem: Employees seemed to be uniformed of key corporate business decisions; and top managers were not really aware of what was going on at the middle and lower management levels. It missed cross-functional, cross-border and cross-cultural lines of work. People, who worked in functional or regional teams, did not ask themselves as many hard questions as they should. And finally, Nissan faced also a lack of Management and cost control systems, and no global security policy was undertaken. Nissan was in a disastrous situation in 1999. [...]

[...] He tried to be closed to people and available for them. He lauded transparency and justified each of his actions, by showing they are logical, rational, useful and consistent, and did not hesitate to give more details. Moreover, he included employees into the changing process by asking them opinions and recommendations, and gave strong support to them. He refused to impose reforms by using authority. Then he tried to develop ownership, commitment and involvement. In addition, we can notice that Carlos Ghosn made effort to understand how people feel within the organization, he used empathy, and tried to give them motivation. [...]