Explain what could have gone wrong at GM over the years, with respect Essay

Explain what could have gone wrong at GM over the years, with respect to quality, to have caused this crisis - Essay Example Several factors played a role that resulted to the crisis that led to General motors ultimately losing out its position as the world number one in auto manufacturing. These factors include union relationships that led ion the differentials in payroll between some of the foreign transplants and general motors, legacy in some costs and programs within the job banks. Other factors include poor strategies in management and decision-making in the development of products and the gap issues in qualities between the general motors automobiles and what its competitors produce. Finally, a major crisis developed from the foreign competitors through importation of automobiles from japan, manipulation of currency by the Japanese government and the foreign transplant in the United States (Klein 2000). General motors for many years has made several strategic errors. As it has been noted, general motors builds automobile in Asia, Europe and some south American countries as the market power demanded it, but they resisted in building small automobiles in the united states. The company did not fully come to understand the relative importance of building such automobiles its market. Therefore, this caused the general motors to try to dominate the small segment in the market attributed to the overall cost incurred and the profit margins in building smaller vehicles as compared to the larger ones. Their main competitors who are mainly the Japanese Toyota company were in a better position since they were well prepared to gaining a foothold in the United States market where they were to make significant growth and expand to even more segments in the market. More problems emerged in the nineties when general motors started manufacturing electric cars just to come and completely scrap the project and destroying all of its vehicles since the company felt that the project