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The answer is Ford, the Ford Motor Company, established by
Henry Ford at the end of the First World War at Dearborn, near Detroit,
Michigan, its global HQ. This plant produces 180 000 cars per year.
Rayong in Thailand represents a more recent development in Asia
producing 77 000 cars per year. In between, there isn’t a continent
apart from Antarctica that hasn’t been touched by the Ford Motor
Company.
The Big Question:
Who are the winners and the losers in the changing locations of the
automotive industry?
| The Task
The year is 2015; Ford in the three years time will be
celebrating 100 years of mass production manufacturing. Your task is
to publish a set of maps and graphs showing the growth and expansion
of the Ford Motor Company in particular and the automotive industry
in general. They should be annotated and maybe some animated. You
might use PowerPoint or a Web authoring software to do this.
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To answer the big question, you will need to research the enquiry
questions. It should be balanced and look at the successes and the
issues of the global car industry.
What are the meanings of key terms, like globalisation,
trans-national corporations etc.
You will need to right click on the following files as source
material to download it. Choose ‘Save Target as’
The
Automotive Industry Revision Guide.doc
Where are Ford Motor Company plants? How has this changed?
You will need to right click on the following files as source
material to download it. Choose ‘Save Target as’
Ford Plants.xls
It will help if you have appropriate maps –
www.graphicmaps.com are
the clearest.
To find out the brands now owned by Ford, go to
http://www.ford.com/en/default.htm
What happens at the plants? How big are they?
The useful web site is
http://www.autointell.com/index.html The details on individual
company plants is at
http://www.autointell.com/management/plant.htm. It's not an
easy site to navigate for geography but the search is function useful to
speed up. You won’t need to pick on all the plants, but examples.
What is happening at the beginning of the 21st Century?
You will need to right click on the following files as source
material to download it. Choose ‘Save Target as’
Ford Recent
Developments.doc
Automotive Industry Developments.doc
Who benefits and who loses?
These are two views of the impact of the car industry on other parts of
the world.
The BBC reported the closure of Dagenham for car assembly and this
report has many links to further documents
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1830635.stm
Use the
http://www.ford.com/en/default.htm site and search for views
on labour [labor] and globalisation should lead you to the Corporate
Citizenship document.
John Pilger has created documentaries on the global economy – the
accompanying website describes the proportion of income going to
different countries when made in Korea.
http://pilger.carlton.com/globalisation/globalproduction
The Green Party, the World Socialist We b Site and the Communist Party
of Australia give even more radical perspectives.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/feb1999/volv-f04.shtml
http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve5/1079ford.html
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2000/12/enlargement.htm
Think about the nature of evidence and reliability when using all sites
in this enquiry. You can always look up using
www.google.com .
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