John and Adele had a great Saturday in New York, and the oysterbars at Grand Central Station were very fresh, and Adele was raved about the dessert fig tart. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 INFO's evening Broadway musical "Porgy & Pace" brilliantly blends elements of a lot of folk black music, and it also makes it interesting for two people to watch. On Sunday, John took his wife to his cousin Harold's house as promised. After lunch, Adele and the Harold family went to Hilltop Park to watch the New York Yankees vs. Baltimore Orioles baseball game. Although John was a die-hard Yankee fan when he was a student at Columbia, he and Harold stayed at home. In the study, John presented his entire plan to outsiders for the first time.

"FederalExpress, or FedEx for short, is the name of the new company." John shamelessly plagiarized, not even letting go of the slogan, "FedexExpress: TheMissionMustReach." (FedEx, mission must be achieved). What do you think? ”

"Express, that's good, it's like a Vanderbilt." Harold, who has worked with railroads all his life, apparently understands Express as an express train. However, John is not going to explain, because there seems to be no concept of express delivery at this time.

"Where are you going to set up your company? New York or Cincinnati? "Harold is clearly more concerned with practical issues.

"Detroit."

"Why?"

"Because the customer is there." As he spoke, John came up with his own well-designed supply chain logistics solution for Ford.

John chose Ford because he knew the weaknesses of the Rouge plant, the world's largest automobile manufacturing conglomerate, that Ford had built to achieve a continuous logistics concept from the ground to the finished product.

Although it is a huge conglomerate of hundreds of factories, more than 100,000 people work here, and the total length of the conveyor belt alone is 120 miles. The plant houses an ore dock, a steel-making furnace, a coke oven, a rolling mill, a glass kiln and a flat glass production line, as well as a tire factory, a stamping plant, an engine casting factory, a frame and assembly plant, a transmission factory, a radiator factory, a tool and die factory, and even a soybean reformer for the production of plastic parts for automobiles, a paper mill, and a power plant. The power plant generates enough electricity to light a city of its size in nearby Detroit.

To supply the plant with raw materials, Ford also bought 700,000 acres of forests, iron ore and quarries in northern Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, tens of thousands of acres of high-quality coal fields in Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and a rubber plantation in Brazil. To transport the material, Ford even operates an ore fleet, a purely regional railroad with 100 miles of self-operated railroad, 16 locomotives and a bus network.

However, this large, seemingly perfect internal production and distribution supply and demand network has never been able to achieve Henry Ford's goal of "planting rubber trees, mining ore, and rolling off the production line, all at the Rouge plant, without relying on suppliers". In fact, the Rouge plant has never had fewer than 6,000 suppliers. While this concept of continuous logistics had the right goals, Ford took the wrong approach. Especially under the general trend of increasingly close global market ties, Ford's "self-sufficiency" model will inevitably raise production costs and improve the difficulty of management. Later, Ford also fell into difficulties step by step, giving up its leading market position to GM and Chrysler.

John's plan was to build a huge warehouse operation center near Detroit, creating a supply and demand network of Ford, raw material suppliers, storage and transportation providers, retailers, and end consumers. Suppliers send raw materials and components directly into the operation center, and Ford has the flexibility to deploy them according to production needs. The products produced will also enter the operation center first and be distributed to distributors around the country according to market needs.

"What a surprise to me!" Harold was clearly shaken by John's plan. "Are you going to take over all of Ford's transportation operations?"

"Let the professionals do the professional things, I don't believe you don't know how inefficient their transportation links are." Both John and Harold were well aware of the extent of the chaos in Ford's internal management over the past two years. Last year alone, there were more than 30 strikes, large and small.

"I think Edsel will like it, but old Henry will definitely shoot you." Harold reminds John that although Edsel had been president of Ford since 1919, Henry Ford Sr. was the "emperor" of Ford. In recent years, the feud between father and son has been well known in American high society. And John's plan undoubtedly negates the foundation of the Rouge factory philosophy that Henry Sr. was so proud of.

"Let's try it first." John couldn't come up with a good way to deal with old Henry for a while. Just because Henry Ford was the first to propose a minimum daily wage for workers does not mean that he is a good man. The apprentice-turned-car tycoon had a stubborn temper, and when the company imposed a smoking ban, he had his cronie Bennett shoot a cigar from a union leader with a 0.45 caliber pistol.

"Is there anything else I can help with?" Harold didn't intend to go on with the issue and moved on to the next topic.

"I need people, I already have a few candidates in Cincinnati, but it's not enough, I need to put the company in place as soon as possible."

"I also have a few for you here, and they are all good at business."

"Can you put me in touch with Dean Dunant at Harvard Business School?" I thought, he has the people I need. ”

Harold was surprised by John's request, but offered to help contact the Wall Street-born dean. In 1937, Harvard Business School was far from being as famous as it would have been. In fact, most entrepreneurs at that time came from poor backgrounds, had little education, and they relied on smart brains and strong hands to manage their companies. Many companies have never hired professional managers, and they are accustomed to using "strongmen" with no defined responsibilities or authority, who rely on personal ambition and various hooligan tactics to keep the company running. For example, at Ford, there are hundreds of senior executives, and only two have college diplomas.

An entrepreneur once described the criteria for a good manager this way: "Just standing next to a person can make him wet his pants". There are even quite a few entrepreneurs who are biased against formally educated managers. They believe that education makes people "unrealistic" and unable to "work on the ground". GM once tried to disguise the educational background of a highly educated treasurer when it hired him. Explaining the reason, the company's vice president said, "Not only did he go to college, but the bad thing was that he got a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, and even worse, he taught at that university for a few years." ”

It was 1937, and although the science of business management was far less developed than later generations, John coveted the unknown talent bonanza of Harvard Business School, and he couldn't wait to swing the hoe that dug into the wall.

In the evening, John and Harold attended a charity event for the Ford Foundation. It's a small charity auction where proceeds will go to the American Red Cross for the aftermath of the Louisville floods. Adele donated her sapphire necklace, and John sold it back for another $20,000. Harold donated a set of 17th-century French tea sets and bought an enamel snuff bottle with a tortoiseshell cap made in China.

After the auction, John and Harold stopped Edsel, and the three of them stayed in the cigar room for almost an hour. Edsel was so interested in John's plan that he even wanted to invite him to join Ford's management team at one point. But Edsel himself was not too sure about convincing his father and the company to help the ministers. However, he agreed that John's men would go to the Ford plant first to inspect and refine the whole plan.

Early Monday morning, John and Adele boarded the train heading west, and there was still a lot of hard work waiting for him in Cincinnati.