Word: daimler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There's Henry Ford, who perfected ways to mass-produce the horseless carriages developed in Germany by Gottlieb Daimler and others. The car became the most influential consumer product of the century, bringing with it a host of effects good and bad: more personal freedom, residential sprawl, social mobility, highways and shopping malls, air pollution (though the end of the noxious pollution produced by horses) and mass markets for mass-produced goods...
...economy line of cars for young families, branding it with the slogan "One Clever Idea After Another." At the same time, Plymouth's mid-sized Breeze sedan and the Voyager minivan received enthusiastic reviews from automotive magazines. But last year, after Chrysler merged with German auto giant Daimler-Benz, the company began to phase out Plymouth, first cutting off sales to Canada and then removing it from Chrysler's marketing schemes. Finally, after sales dropped 30 percent this year, DaimlerChrysler tolled the death knell on the line altogether...
...began issuing reams of organizational flow charts. Every phase was delineated with titles like "synergy tracking"; every group had its weekly meeting schedule, from last year until 2001, when the integration is to be complete. The process is directed by Rudiger Grube, the tireless tactician who helped Schrempp restructure Daimler-Benz...
...assigned to push and cajole their counterparts into combining everything from supplies to research. Every time there is disagreement, the integration process for that group is halted until a solution is found. Progress is tracked in the "war room," a nondescript office down a dark second-floor corridor in Daimler's imposing brown headquarters in Stuttgart...
Cynics abound, especially in Germany, where Daimler-Benz had to take a huge write-off because of Schrempp's disastrous acquisition of Fokker, a Dutch aviation company. But the mountain-climbing chairman has won astonishing support from the Americans for his straight talk, quick decision making and more charisma than most rooms can handle...