HONDA
· Entrepreneur
Soichiro Honda
(1906-1991)
· Products of Honda
o Automobiles
Honda Accord
o Motorcycles
Honda Super Club
o Power Equipment
Power equipments such as engines, tillers, lawn mowers, riding mowers, trimmers, blowers, sprayers, hedge trimmers, snow throwers, generators, pumps, outboard engines, inflatable boats and compact household cogeneration units.
Diesel Stationary Engine and Generator
o Engines
Honda Outboard Motor
o Robots
Asimo
· Products, Services and Business Concept
Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda surpassed Nissan in 2001 to become the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer. As of August 2008, Honda surpassed Chrysler as the fourth largest automobile manufacturer in the United States. Honda is the sixth largest automobile manufacturer in the world.
Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft and power generators, amongst others. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 Honda let scheduled to be released in 2011. Honda spends about 5% of its revenues into R&D.
· Entrepreneur and Business
Soichiro Honda was born in 1906 in a small village in Japan. It was so small that it didn’t even have electricity. His family was poor. Soichiro had eight brothers and sisters. Sadly, five of them died when they were young because they did not have good medical care. When Soichiro was eight years old, he saw his first automobile. He was amazed by it. For the next 50 years, he loved machines on wheels.
When he was 15 years old, Soichiro left his village to work at an auto repair shop in Tokyo. It was then that Honda discovered motorcycles. He spent all of his free time fixing and riding motorcycles. He returned to his village six years later to open his own garage. Soon he owned several shops and had over 50 employees.
At the same time, he began to build and race motorcycles and cars. Honda loved to race, and he became one of Japan’s most competitive drivers. In 1936, his racecar crashed while he was driving 100 miles per hour. Half of Honda’s face was crushed, and he had other serious injuries. It took him a year and a half to recover. After this, his family begged him to give up racing. He looked for a less dangerous job and finally decided to become a manufacturer.
At first, he manufactured engine parts. The Japanese navy used a lot of his engine parts in World War II. In 1948, after the war, he started the Honda Motor Company. He started the company with only $3,300. He made his first machines from engine parts that the military did not need after the war. These machines were not real motorcycles: they were bicycles with motors. People bought them because they needed a reliable form of transportation.
As Honda’s business grew, he began to make different types of motorcycles. By 1950, his motorcycles were selling all over Japan. But there were 50 other motorcycle makers in Japan at the time. In 1958, Honda designed a lightweight motorcycle called the Super Cub. It was a huge success and Honda made a lot of money. Two years later, Honda built the world’s biggest motorcycle factory in Japan.
By the 1960s, the Super Cub was popular all over Asia. But Honda wanted the motorcycle to be popular all over the world. In Europe, he put his motorcycles in difficult races to show how good they were. In the United States, he tried a different method. He used a magazine ad with the words “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda.” It showed ordinary Americans such as students, businessmen, and older people all riding happily on the Honda Super Cub. The ad appeared in many popular magazines.
Readers who had never ridden a motorcycle saw the ad. The ad showed that motorcycles were not just for crazy young people who wore black leather jackets. They were good for other people too. The company sold thousands of motorcycles to new riders. Honda then started to put the ads on television. This was also very successful. For example, he put an ad for his motorcycle on during the Academy Awards program. Millions of people watched that program, and on the next day, sales of the motorcycle went up tremendously. By 198, Honda had sold 1 million motorcycles in the United States.
In 1963, his company started to make cars. In 1975, it produced the Civic: the next year, the Accord: and then in 1978, the Prelude. Soon, the company was one of the world’s biggest automobile makers. Honda was also famous for his business style. He believed that workers and bosses should have a close relationship. He also thought it was important to encourage workers to do their best.
In 1973, Soichiro Honda retired as president of his company. He died in 1991. Honda was very important to Japan’s recent history. He and many other business leaders helped make Japan into a leading industrial nation.
· Business Strategy, Uniqueness and Current Market Place of Honda
With high fuel prices and a weak U.S. economy in June 2008, Honda reported a 1% sales increase while its rivals, including the Detroit Big Three and Toyota, have reported double-digit losses. Honda's sales were up almost 20 percent from the same month last year. The Civic and the Accord were in the top five list of sales. Analysts have attributed this to two main factors. First, Honda's product lineup consists of mostly small to mid-size, highly fuel-efficient vehicles. Secondly, over the last ten years, Honda has designed its factories to be flexible, in that they can be easily retooled to produce any Honda model that may be in-demand at the moment.
Nonetheless, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota, were still not immune to the global financial crisis of 2008, as these companies reduced their profitability forecasts. The economic crisis has been spreading to other important players in the vehicle related industries as well. In November 2009 the Nihon Keizai Shinbun reported that Honda Motor exports have fallen 64.1%.
At the 2008 Beijing Auto Show, Honda presented the Li Nian ("concept" or "idea") 5-door hatchback and announced that they were looking to develop an entry-level brand exclusively for the Chinese market similar to Toyota's Scion brand in the USA. The brand would be developed by a 50–50 joint-venture established in 2007 with Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group.
Following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 Honda announced plans to halve production at its UK plants. The decision was made to put staff at the Swindon plant on a 2 day week until the end of May as the manufacturer struggled to source supplies from Japan. It's thought around 22,500 cars were produced during this period.
