"EssayHarley Davidson: Preparing for the NextCenturyIntroduction:The company Harley Davidson is a well-known organisation of motorcycle manufacture inAmerica. The company was founded on 1903, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Moran, 2007). Nolan& Kotha, (2007), have stated that the company was about to become bankrupt on the year 1970but have recovered successfully and become the leading heavyweight motorcycle brand inAmerica once again in the year 2005. The company has grabbed the 50% of United Statesmarket share and 37% of World’s market share in last 18 years (Child, 1976).This essay gives a critical evaluation regarding the industry and a thorough assessment oftransformation of the company. The model of porter’s five forces have been discussed here inorder to give a brief introduction of key characteristics of the organisation and the industry.Critical evaluation of the key features of the Industry:The Automobile industry is one of the biggest industry in international market where twowheeler segment is the most important component of the sector (Henry, 2011). This industry isone of the most significant financial sector by revenue. The Model of Porter’s Five Forces canexplain the key features of these industry in the context of Harley Davidson. Porter’s five forces for Two Wheeler automobile Industry:The porter’s five forces model contain five forces such as Threat of New Entrant, BargainingPower of Buyer, and Bargaining power of seller, threat of substitutes and threat of newcompetitors.2 Threat of new entrants:Ahlstrong & Bruton, (2009), have proposed that a huge number of capital investment support isrequired to enter in this industry. Also economies of scale is extensively high for this industry. Itis very difficult for a new entrant in this industry to attain that high economies of scales.Government interventions and policies that are associated to this industry are also very high. Thethreat of the new entrants is very low for the automobile industry due to all above reasons (Clark& Fujimoto, 1991). Harley Davidson is one of the renowned brand of two wheeler in thisindustry. It has grabbed highest market share across the globe. Threats for new entrants fororganisation like Harley Davidson is very low as customer’s loyalty towards this brand is veryhigh.Bargaining Power of Buyer:The bargaining power of buyer is a high threat for the industry if the power of the buyer isconcentrated and products are undifferentiated (Roy, 2011). Eventually, buyer can become awareabout the price of other existing supplier in the market. Then buyer can be switched to othersupplier as the switching cost is very low for this particular market. When buyers are purchasingproducts in a bulk then they can easily influence the price of the product by the process ofbargaining. The two wheeler segment in automobile industry provides numerous options to thebuyer so this threat is high. Though the Harley Davidson is a heavy weight two wheeler industry,still it has to face high threat due to the presence of numerous other options (Schembri, 2009).3 Bargaining power of supplier: The presence of Product differentiation is very low for the industry. The competition isextensively high in this industry. Presence of intense competition is a high threat for the supplierin this industry which stops them from bargaining.Threat of substitutes: The technology is improving and become dynamic. All existing companies in this field haveintended to improve themselves technically to survive. Schembri, (2009), has informed that anumerous numbers of two wheeler companies are present in the market other than HarleyDavidson. Moreover those companies offer their product in a lower range than Harley Davidson.Some other companies are there who offers their product with some more features in a lower costcompared to Harley Davidson. So the threat of substitute in this industry is very high.Threat of Competitors:The two wheeler automobile industry contains a numerous number of established companieswho provides their product in economy rate. The switching cost of the buyer is very low whichprovides an opportunity to other existing companies in the market (Henry, 2011). Due to today’sdynamic nature of the world, continuous innovation takes place within every organisations. Thisis the main factor behind the tough competition in this field. Currently, the entry of several otherforeign player may increase the competitive rivalry in this industry further (Roy, 2011).4 Critical Assessment of transformation of the company: In the duration of 1960-1973, the company was made an effort to expand their productivity. Thecompany has added some less skilled worker to their product line. As a result their productivitytends to decrease and a huge number of loss started to occur informed by Moran, (2007).Pugliese & Cagan, (2002), have said that, in order to compete with those Japanese companies,Harley Davidson started a joint venture with an Italian Company named Ameracchi. Criticallyspeaking, this joint venture was not so fruitful and it had increased the ridership of the companyas opposed bySchembri, (2009). Then the Harley Davidson ended their joint venture programwith that Italian company and hired Benton and Bowles to stronger their marketing andadvertisement segment in the market. This transformational process was also failed to improvethe situation of Harley and the market share of Harley in US started to fall rapidly (Hamel,2007). In the 1980, the profitability of the Harley Davidson Company tends to decrease more rapidlydue to the entrance of some Japanese motorcycles companies in this industry (Schembri, 2009).In attempt to survive in the bankruptcy on mentioned year the company started to search for abuyer. According to Ahlstrong & Bruton, (2009), the company had to pay a large amount of debtat that time. In this situation the management team of Harley Davidson have realized that thewhole manufacturing process of Harley Davidson needs to be improved. Then the managementteam started to follow production process of Japanese companies and they have termed it asproductivity triad(Moran, 2007).The company had to change their whole process of production and product execution. Theystarted to involve employee in their decision making procedure. Also they involved an approach5 named statistical quality control (SOC) and under this procedure the authority has started toteach their employee regarding the procedure of identifying quality and productionproblems(Nolan & Kotha, 2007). An observation of management team of Harley at Hondaforced them to realize that the employee need to know about the procedure of identifyingproblem in order to survive in the doldrums. Also the company has introduced an application of JIT inventory practice. Ultimately, in 1983,to gain competitive advantage and to protect themselves from the Japanese venture inheavyweight segment, the Harley Davidson appealed for tariff protectionism from thegovernment of US which was supported by the Government(Moran, 2007). As a result, it hasincreased the competitive advantage of the company and successfully revolved its inventory. Theproductivity also increased after this transformational process generated by the company. Itsrevenue in US market segment increased 80% by that time and global revenue increased by 1.7times(Nolan & Kotha, 2007).Nolan &Kotha, (2007), have stated that the transformation was continued to the year 1993 whenthe company has changed its pay structure, job description, responsibity etc. Growth of thisheavyweight motorcycle company has robustly increased from the year 1993 to 2000. Thecompany has entered an acquisition program with Buell and successfully enlarge their brand bythe year 2004 by shipping 9000 Buell motorcycles to their dealers. After the year 2005, thecompany has introduced several other differentiated products to their product line. Sales havebeen increased to 6% in the year 2006(Nolan & Kotha, 2007).6 "