Detroit Free Press: Marick Masters on Ford restructuring
Finding a balance at Ford Motor Co. right now is delicate. Wall Street has applauded recent restructuring changes while some workers cringe as the legacy automaker continues to make dramatic staff changes designed to help the company compete in an increasingly dynamic environment. Marick Masters, a professor at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University, said time is too precious to not make more strategic acquisitions to fulfill immediate needs at Ford. “It’s probably too time-consuming for (CEO Jim) Farley to groom and develop that talent in-house. The scope of tasks that he has to complete in order to deal with issues associated with supply chain in a highly turbulent environment are too complex to take on your own,” Masters said. “I think what he needs to do is acquire companies that have the capacity to do this, to a large extent, stand-alone operations that can feed into an existing operation.” As Ford faces continued pressure to eliminate costs and focus on electrification, Masters said anything and anyone who lacks the necessary new skills to meet that objective is “expendable.”
