General Motors•General Motors (GM) is an American multinational automaker based in Detroit, Michigan.

•GM employs 209,000 people in every major region of the world and does business in some 157 countries.

•It has a collective revenue of over 136 Billion $

•General Motors produces cars and trucks in 31 countries, and sells and services these vehicles through the following divisions: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden.

•GM's OnStar subsidiary provides vehicle safety, security and information services.

•In 2009, General Motors sold 6.5 million cars and trucks globally.

General Motors

Market control of GM

Revenue Collections Bar Graph

Why do you need BPR here

• BPR is implemented group of logically related tasks that use the firm's resources to provide customer oriented results in support of the organization's objectives.

Process Improvement Process Reengineering

Incremental Change Radical Transformation

Process-led Vision-led

Assumes attitudes and behavior Changes Attitude and behavior

Management Led Director Led

Various simultaneous projects Limited no of initiatives

Proof of GM’s downslide

Whats radical

Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, and Pontiac. Each independent automaker was operated differently and

competing with each other. The competition among its own independent automakers and lack of centralization

Jack Smith, General

Motors's CEO, saw an

opportunityfor change,

"I had the opportunity

to really structure the

business in the way I

thoughtit should run

Flow of implementing a BPR

• Realization • Essentials• Rethink• Redesign• Rethink• Retool• Evaluating again

Reasons why GM failed

Provided too many incentivesProvided 0% financing and a rebate of 3000$Failed to take lead in the hybrid car movement promoting green movementBenchmarking was not dome properlyInteriors and performance wasn’t goodRelations with workers was bad since there was a strong union present within the workers

Flaws

• Multidivisional structure• Centralization of key processes• Regions represent autonomous strategic

business units• Brands are a sub division of the SBU’s with

minimum control over the processes• Minimal links to identical brands in different

regions

FORMS OF RE-ENGINEERING

• Systems Engineering-They opted for it because they identified lack of coordination between various level as the single most radical change to be brought.

• Infrastructure reengineering was replaced by system development.

• Systems reengineering helps in effectively utilizing computers (hardware and software), storage and technical personnel that an organization has at its disposal.

Actual BPR

• General Motors Corporation implemented a 3-year plan to consolidate their multiple desktop systems into one. It is known internally as "Consistent Office Environment" (Booker, 1994).

• This reengineering process involved replacing the numerous brands of desktop systems, network operating systems and application development tools into a more manageable number of vendors and technology platforms.

• According to Donald G. Hedeen, director of desktops and deployment at GM and manager of the upgrade program, he says that the process "lays the foundation for the implementation of a common business communication strategy across General Motors."

Possible changes to be considered for GM BPR

Significant actions undertaken by GM(along with the help of IT)

• Reducing legacy cost with the united auto workers agreement

• Increasing vehicle resale value by reducing the sales to fleet operations

Advantage: To decrease exposure to failing international operations and to increase liquidity

Lotus Development Corporation and Hewlett-Packard Development Company, formerly Compaq Computer Corporation, received the single largest non-government sales ever from General Motors Corporation. GM also planned to use Novell NetWare as a security client, Microsoft Office and Hewlett-Packard printers. According the Donald G. Hedeen, this saved GM 10% to 25% on support costs, 3% to 5% on hardware, 40% to 60% on software licensing fees, and increased efficiency by overcoming incompatibility issues by using just one platform across the entire company

Actions taken by GM in its BPR-The four point plan in connection with its database linking system

• Reduce labor expenses• Cut legacy costs• Decrease production capacity• New designs and marketing strategies

Possible implementation of kaizen with BPR

• Operates at the individual level• Helps in decentralization of communication

and helps build team work• Empower employment• Innovation and creativity• Foster international business

Possible Implementation over 3 years

• Begin to phase out brands

• Develop yearly goals

• New visions and missions

• Invest heavily in R&D for new designs because developing nations would do that,.

YEAR 1

Year 2

• Introduce new brand images and marketing campaigns

• Begin to clear inventories• Distribution Systems Alteration• Developing long term supply chain

arrangements• Monitor the transitional phase

Year 3

• Begin fixed investment in specializes assets for future vehicles.

• Realize potential synergies• Continuous Quality control and customer

feedback.

Gm has also done a BPR on its tool and die making units

• Result of the improved communication an advanced BPR was conducted as a part of infrastructural Reengineering

• Software defined concepts which are almost immediately shared revised die making procedures immediately by scouting throughout the globe for it

• It reduced the Die making time by half and saved annually almost 500 million $ in reduced inventories.