Honda: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 04:07, 11 August 2004

Honda logo

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (本田技研工業株式会社 Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha) is a Japanese manufacturer of cars, trucks, motorcycles, and scooters. They also make ATVs, electrical generators, marine engines, and lawn and garden equipment. With more than 14 million internal combustion engines built each year it is the largest engine-maker in the world. In 2004 it began to produce diesel motors which are very quiet and do not require particulate filters to pass the pollution standards. Honda's high-end line of cars are branded Acura in North America.

Honda is headquartered in Tokyo. Their shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, as well as exchanges in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, London, Paris, and Switzerland.

Company history

Honda was founded on September 24, 1948 and the company took the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda. They began by manufacturing engines to power bicycles.

Honda was the first foreign car manufacturer to build a car plant in the United States. Honda now has plants in Marysville, Anna, and East Liberty, Ohio; and Lincoln, Alabama. Its head offices are located in Los Angeles, California.

In 1989, Honda launched its VTEC variable valve timing system in its car engines, which gave improved efficiency and performance across the broader range of engine speeds. This technology is now in most Honda cars.

For the 2007 model year, Honda plans to become more competitive in automotive safety. It would do so by offering front-seat side airbags, side-curtain airbags, and anti-lock brakes as standard equipment in all of the automobiles it offered in North America, except The Honda S2000 and Acura NSX, which would not have side-curtain airbags. By the 2006 calendar year, Honda plans to make Vehicle Safety Assist and rollover sensors standard in all light trucks, including the Honda CR-V, Honda Odyssey, and Acura MDX. By an unknown date, Honda also plans to make many or most of its vehicles safer for pedestrians, by more safely designing hood structures, hood hinges, front frame constructs, and breakaway wiper pivots.

File:Goldwing.rally.bristol.750pix.jpg

Honda Goldwing

Honda's Strategy

During the 1960s, when it was a relatively small manufacturer, Honda broke out of the Japanese motorcycle market and began exporting to the US. Taking Honda’s story as an archetype of the smaller manufacturer entering a new market already occupied by highly dominant competitors, the story of their market entry, and their subsequent huge success in the US and around the world, has been the subject of some academic controversy, as competing explanations have been advanced to explain Honda’s strategy and the reasons for their success.

The first of these explanations was put forward when, in 1975, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was commissioned by the UK government to write a report explaining why and how the British motorcycle industry had been out-competed by its Japanese competitors. The report concluded that the Japanese firms, including Honda, had sought a very high scale of production (they had made a large number of motorbikes) in order to benefit from economies of scale and learning curve effects. It blamed the decline of the British motorcycle industry on the failure of British managers to invest enough in their businesses to profit from economies of scale and scope.

The second story is told in 1984 by Richard Pascale, who had interviewed the Honda executives responsible for the firm’s entry into the US market. As opposed to the tightly focussed strategy of low cost and high scale that BCG accredited to Honda, Pascale found that their entry into the US market was a story of “miscalculation, serendipity, and organizational learning” – in other words, Honda’s success was due to the adaptability (and hard work) of its staff, rather than any tightly formed, long term strategy. For example, Honda’s initial plan on entering the US was to compete in large motorcycles, around 300cc. It was only when the team found that the scooters they were using to get themselves around their US base of San Francisco attracted positive interest from consumers that they came up with the idea of selling the Supercub.

The most recent school of thought on Honda’s strategy was put forward by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad in 1989. Creating the concept of core competencies with Honda as an example, they argued that Honda’s success was due to its focus on leadership in the technology of internal combustion engines. For example, the high power-to-weight ratio engines Honda produced for its racing bikes provided technology and expertise which was transferable into mopeds.

Honda's entry into the US motorcycle market during the 1960s is used as a case study for teaching introductory strategy at many business schools worldwide.

Mopeds and light motorcycles

Ape models
Cub Series
CT Series
ST Series
S Series Sports models
Z Series Monkey models

Motorcycle models

Scooter models

Silver Wing
Silver Wing ABS
Reflex
Reflex ABS
Elite 80
Metropolitan
Metropolitan II
Ruckus

Car models

Robots

ASIMO, a bipedal humanoid robot

External links

References

"Move Over, Volvo: Honda Sets New Safety Standard for Itself", an article in the "News" section of the March, 2004 issue of Motor Trend, on page 32

Honda is the surname of several people and fictional characters, including:

Edmond Honda, character in Street Fighter
Hiroto Honda (Tristan Taylor), character in Yu-Gi-Oh!
Kyoko Honda and Tohru Honda, character in Fruits Basket

@@ Line 68: / Line 68: @@
 *[[Honda Civic del Sol|Civic del Sol]]
 *[[Honda CR-V|CR-V]]
-*[[Honda Concerto]]
 *[[Honda Element|Element]]
 *[[Honda EV Plus|EV Plus]], an [[electric vehicle]]