At Nissan's annual general meeting of shareholders, Uchida, the CEO who took office for half a year, felt great pressure from all sides. Topics such as the company's management style, the salary system of board members and the collapse of Nissan's share price are frequently placed in front of the stage. The shareholders present seem to lack confidence in the upcoming new revival plan.
This is the second confrontation between Uchida and shareholders since he took office in June+February last year. At the special general meeting of shareholders held at the beginning of this year, many people expressed doubts about the new senior management team. In two face-to-face meetings, participants publicly expressed their nostalgia for the Ghosn era, and some even bluntly said at the scene that the indicted former chairman had excellent leadership skills.
Louis XIV once said: I am a country.
For the past, Ghosn was Nissan.
With cash flow risk, operating pressure, sales volume and stock price plummeting, Nissan is facing the most difficult dark moment in 20 years. And this Nissan savior carlos ghosn who once existed like Louis XIV? Ghosn), while being missed by some Nissan people, his single-handedly dominated products and market routes are being overthrown and denied by the new leadership here.
It seems that Nissan is in a mess now, and Ghosn's reign was a failure. From the high-spirited 1999 to the totally rejected 20 19, it is only 20 years, just like a cruel periodic law. With the golden age after Nissan's revival, Ghosn also attracted a series of criticisms under Nissan's difficult situation.
For more than 20 years, before the coronation of glory, the "cost killer" felt the sadness of winning and losing in advance under the rebellion of his own people. Then, how much of Nissan's difficulties and embarrassment at this stage are Ghosn's pot? Is the Ghosn era really as unbearable as Nishikawa Hiroshi and Uchida Seiji have repeatedly stressed? How should we evaluate Ghosn's merits and demerits in broadening the field of industrial observation?
"liquidation" in Ghosn's era
According to the performance report of Nissan in March of fiscal year 2020 (April 20 19-March 2020), the final profit and loss was a deficit of 671200 million yen, which was 1 1 year after March of fiscal year 2009, and the deficit was almost equal to the previous deficit of 684.3 billion yen. At present, Nissan is at the V-shaped bottom of revenue and profit, which is the basis for us to discuss the subsequent influence of Ghosn era and its "legacy" of management and operation.
The denial of Ghosn's "liquidation" can be traced back to his first successor, Hirohito Nishikawa. This "comrade-in-arms" who fought side by side with Ghosn for many years drew a clear line with the latter for the first time when he was in prison, and repeatedly mentioned the "choice and concentration" strategy of bidding farewell to Ghosn's thinking. Facing the headache financial data since 20 19, why
Later, Nishikawa Hiroshi finished class early, Uchida's team came to power, and the second-in-command Guan Run left. I won't go into details here. But it is worth mentioning that Uchida and Chief Operating Officer Gupta (Asvany? The medium-term development strategy jointly planned by Gupta is related to the company's transformation in the next decade. Both the reform framework and the market expansion direction of "doing something but not doing something" have pushed the denial of Ghosn era to a new climax.
Nissan denied Ghosn,
Power? Plan 88 is a main line.
20 1 1, officially released by Nissan? "power? 88"? In order to accelerate Nissan's global performance growth within six years (from fiscal year 201/kloc-0 to fiscal year 20 16), the plan has formulated a macro framework and outline, including business expansion in emerging markets and market segments.
According to Ghosn's plan, to go on stage? By the end of 20 16, Nissan will achieve 8% global market share and 8% sustainable operating profit rate when implementing the "88 Strategy". Unfortunately, neither of these goals has been achieved.
Nishikawa Hirohito came to power for just half a year, which not only completely denied Ghosn's Power88, but also the follow-up of the plan, that is, Ghosn's new strategic Nissan? m.o.v.e.to？ 2022 was also overthrown. He repeatedly stressed in many public occasions that Ghosn has laid a curse for Nissan in the process of promoting the performance improvement of Power88, which is extremely short-sighted.
For example, Nissan's biggest market is the United States. The United States has always been Nissan's biggest profit source, but the performance of this market has not been ideal in recent years. Nissan attributed the negative feedback from the United States to Ghosn's radical expansion. Both Hirohito Nishikawa and Seiichi Uchida believe that Ghosn's new car sales model in the United States has become more and more deformed in order to gain a larger market share, promote incentives beyond the industry average, and let the terminal exchange price for quantity.
Besides, in power? During the "88 Plan" period, Ghosn re-launched Nissan's low-end brand datsun on 20 14 in order to seize the market share of more emerging countries.
Because of Ghosn's promotion, Datsan restarted its sales in the Indian market and began to sell in several emerging countries such as Indonesia in the same year. At present, its channel outlets have covered 9 countries including Russia, South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia, and it has three production bases in India, Indonesia and Russia.
At that time, Ghosn had high hopes for datsun, hoping that the brand could successfully seize 40% of the market segment. But the reality is that datsun's core models have fallen behind the competitors in overall sales. For example, in the Indian market, the sales volume of the brand 20 19 has been completely halved in the first half of the year.
Due to the long-term sluggish sales in datsun, Nishikawa Hiroshi directly defined the brand as a negative asset in the Ghosn era in his decision-making reform, and the production capacity of the brand will be reduced. India became the first region to use knives.
In the Uchida New Deal, gradually shrinking and eliminating datsun is regarded as an important link to reduce costs and increase efficiency. First, withdraw from Indonesia, and then plan to close another production line, and achieve the goal of reducing expenditure by cutting marketing, R&D and other costs.
First half and second half
Only by tearing off the sacred label of Ghosn's "savior" and jumping out of the simple perceptual trial of an era and the one-dimensional worship of this "business genius" can we raise a more important question about Nissan's revival, infighting and even alliances and transnational conspiracy theories: how to fairly evaluate Ghosn's merits and demerits.
Ghosn divided Nissan into the first half and the second half.
What is Nissan's position in 1999? The total net debt exceeds $20 billion, exceeding 2 trillion yen. You are dying, and you will appreciate Ghosn's help. This historical background determines that it will be a long time after 1999, that is, the first half of Ghosn's turnaround for Nissan, and its primary task is to renew the company's life, increase revenue and reduce expenditure.
It is also at this stage that Ghosn has achieved the ultimate cost control, and his reputation as a "cost killer" is not empty. He overthrew the previous supply chain, reshaped the price system, cut down the jumbled product lines, initiated drastic reforms, and began to change Nissan's product thinking, leaning towards popular and more profitable models in the market.
As we all know, it has created the miracle of "Nissan Renaissance", so there is no need to say more here. However, when the timeline is set to the second half, Ghosn is no longer facing a hectic Nissan, but a Renault-led alliance. At this stage, Ghosn's consideration of Renault's interests must take precedence over Nissan's.
The essential problem of Renault-Nissan alliance's vacillation is the inequality of status, rights and strength. Nissan's foundation is stronger than Renault's (mainly referring to the applicability of products to the market, not technology), but it fell into financial difficulties when it was acquired and integrated more than ten years ago. Nissan, who is in a hurry to seek medical treatment and is sickly, will welcome Renault into the house. Once the stronger Nissan changes its mind, the capital relationship between them will be transformed into "unequal treatment" in an instant:
Renault holds 43% voting shares of Nissan, and Nissan holds 0/5% non-voting shares of Renault/KLOC. Under the premise of sharp contrast, anyone who puts himself in Nissan's position will definitely be restless. At the node of the alliance for more than ten years, Nissan has already thrown off the strength of Renault. Before, if it hadn't been for an iron-fisted figure like Ghosn to suppress the imbalance between the two sides in "potential", the alliance would have fallen apart long ago.
Because of this, the interests of the alliance are before us. Ghosn naturally needs to use Renault to suppress Nissan in operational decision-making to maintain the stability of the alliance, and the interests of Nissan are not the same as those of the alliance.
Also in the second half, Ghosn's "work" is "turning over". Ghosn is a hero to the league, but not necessarily to Nissan.
As long as the alliance does not disintegrate, the long-term derivative result is likely to change from Renault-Nissan to Nissan-Renault with the imbalance of strength comparison between Renault and Nissan. Because of this, abuse of power for personal gain and financial mistakes are just excuses given by conspiracy theorists. When the imbalance becomes more and more serious, a strong leader like Ghosn will also lay a curse for himself by suppressing the balance.
The starting point of evaluation is different, and the merits and demerits are naturally different.
Whether it is right or wrong depends on the specific time and location.
It is worth mentioning that as the supreme helmsman, Ghosn is indeed responsible for some key decisions, but like a big tree, Ghosn and the leadership have laid the bane, but it is indispensable for others to water and irrigate. Just like the "Renault blood-sucking Nissan" incident, Ghosn participated, but also the current French president and former French Minister of Economy Macron (Emmanuel? The shadow of Macron).
There has been success, and success is success.
What did Ghosn do for Nissan?
The first is the misjudgment of the global auto market.
Since the first half of 20 19, it has been frequently reported that Nissan has laid off 10,000 people worldwide, cut down more than ten factories in two years, and reduced production capacity to improve the actual operating rate.
Last stand, which announced the V-shaped recovery at the end of May this year, is determined to reduce the global production capacity by 20%, and plans to increase the operating rate of first-line factories to over 80%, and "move the knife" at the production end. In fact, for Nissan, the production capacity of 5.4 million vehicles is a reasonable figure, but at this stage, the company's production capacity has been seriously surplus, and the global production capacity has reached 7.2 million vehicles.
In addition to the overcapacity of nearly 2 million vehicles in the world, Nissan also plans to reduce the total number of models from 69 to less than 55 in 2023, which means that nearly 20% of the models will be phased out in the next few years until they enter history. All the "slimming" measures of Nissan in the past year, including the latest medium-term plan announced this year, can be traced back to Ghosn's overestimation of the automobile market and Nissan's performance in the past decade; At this stage, we have to adopt the strategy of "selective concentration", gradually abandon non-key markets such as Europe and shrink to the three core markets of China, the United States and Japan, which is not unrelated to Ghosn's blind expansion to emerging countries.
Secondly, it is the weakening of "technology Nissan".
In recent years, the aura of "Technology Nissan" has gradually faded, and the premium of Nissan's brand has gradually declined, which has been criticized by more and more fans and insiders. All of this, Ghosn's low-cost operation mode and the route of changing sales at low prices are also hard to blame. It can even be said that the image of "technology Nissan" gradually collapsed during Ghosn's period.
In fact, Nissan's technological advantages in that year were not inferior to those of Toyota and Honda, both Japanese. As early as the 1980s, Nissan took the lead in launching the popular "90 1 Movement" to build "the world's first automotive technology leader in the 1990s", while the performance car built by Nissan, the famous VQ engine, was known as the "God of War Super Run" G-TR, and its heyday was all Japanese.
However, since Nissan joined the alliance, efforts have been made to improve the versatility of parts and platforms, and the product cost has been reduced, but the performance has been mediocre. In the past, brilliant technical benchmarks have gone through the "last twilight", either shelved or weakened, or the core R&D department was dissolved, which is beneficial to improving corporate profits in the short term and unfavorable to brand image in the long term.
Toyota relies on TNGA to gallop in the field of Japanese vehicle architecture and technology. In the era of fuel vehicle platform, TNGA architecture realized modularization of vehicle chassis through platforms such as GA-C/GA-K/GA-L, and when Volkswagen launched MEB and Daimler released MEA, Toyota also launched e-TNGA architecture. Like TNGA's internal company system, e-TNGA also goes beyond the level of vehicle platform.
At present, many consumers around me are not proficient in automobile knowledge, but as long as they hear Toyota, especially the new car with TNGA architecture, they can't help but think that this is a good car. As for the new Corolla and the new Lei Ling, many people came to ask for car models, but the models were all designated as "Corolla/Lei Ling".
Honda's previous "Earth Dream" and current "i-MMD" not only have stories and dry goods to tell than Nissan VC-Turbo in terms of technical advantages, but more importantly, Honda's technical popularity is also higher than Nissan's. At present, i-MMD is equipped with many models, and VC-Turbo models are few. To sum up, the result of maximizing the cost control advantage, although the profit and revenue statements are more glamorous, has dragged down the long-term development of "Technology Nissan".
Ghosn's "passing" in the second half essentially broke the "balance" within Nissan and between Nissan and the alliance. At the end of last century, Ghosn realized the internal "balance" of profits with the high rationalization of "cost killer", but more than ten years later, a new "imbalance" appeared. If we continue to promote the development of Nissan in the old way, it is bound to fail to achieve a new round of "balance".
For a legend like Ghosn, it turned the tide for Nissan that year and brought the once dying manufacturing giant back to life; In the second half of the peak of power, in different positions and different business backgrounds, it can be said that success is success and success is success. When times make heroes, they become prisoners. However, in this life, heroes do more for Nissan.
This article is taken from the cover story of the July issue of Automobile Commune magazine.
Text/North Shore
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