Ford Motor Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's third
largest automaker based on worldwide vehicle sales. Based in Dearborn, Michigan,
a suburb of Detroit, the automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on
June 16, 1903. Ford's overseas business encompasses only one truly global brand
(Volvo of Sweden) other than the Ford brand itself, but it also owns a one-third
controlling interest in Mazda of Japan and a small holding in former subsidiary
Aston Martin of England. Its former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were
sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008, both companies having been through
many changes of ownership in the recent past. Lincoln and Mercury are also Ford's
aspirational brands in the USA, but not in the rest of the world. Ford also sold
the brand names of Daimler (excluding certain rights sold to Germany's Daimler AG),
Lanchester, and Rover to Tata Motors of India.
In 2007, Ford became the third-ranked automaker in US sales after General Motors and
Toyota, falling from the second-ranked automaker slot for the first time in the
previous 56 years. Ford was also the overall seventh-ranked American-based company
in the 2007 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2006 of $160.1 billion.
In 2007, Ford revenues increased to $173.9 billion, while producing 6.553 million
automobiles and employing about 245,000 employees at around 100 plants and facilities
worldwide. Also in 2007, Ford received more initial quality survey awards from
J. D. Power and Associates than any other automaker, with five vehicles ranking at
the top of their categories, and fourteen vehicles ranked in the top three.
Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale
management of an industrial workforce, using elaborately engineered manufacturing
sequences typified by moving assembly lines. Henry Ford's methods came to be known
around the world as Fordism by 1914....