Customer Reviews

Well Made in America: Lessons from Harley-Davidson on Being the Best

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2 star:		(1)
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This book gives an excellent glimpse into a company that committed most of the mistakes typical American companies make and found themselves in the same financial straits. But rather than giving in to a me-too attitude of trying to provide an inferior product with cheap foreign labor and cost cutting at every turn, they instead did things the American way - reconnecting with their customer base and creating a unique product that customers were proud to own.

Any company that deals with American consumers ought to have this book on the desk of every manager in the company.

This is an excellant example of a company that was near bankruptcy and able to pull itself together, reinvent itself, and again is a world class company. Many of the things that transpired with Harley can be subsituted into our business today. The culture of Harley is so unique that many people have the Harley Logo tatooed on their bodies! This is one of the best American business success stories I have read. Many ideas that were used to regain market share would help alot of manufacturing companies today if they follow a similar path as the Harley Execs did. In my oponion, Harley is right up there with baseball and apple pie. This story translates what people can accomplish when they have common goals.

This book is OK (the last section is the best, in my opinion), but suffers from two problems: it seems to jump around alot and it is also pretty much a fluff piece.

The book starts out trying to describe the management changes that occured at HD, then spends many pages discussing the various finance issues that came up when the management bought HD from it's parent company, then goes into sales issues then back to management issues. So, is this supposed to be a historical record or a management book? It does not devote enough time to either topic to do either subject justice.

Also, this book is in my opinion a fluff piece. All of H-D's strengths are glorified while their weaknesses are rationalized away by saying that "everyone does it" (ex, H-D's earlier management was bad, but so was every other US company's).

The last section on how to implement these changes into your company is good. If the rest of the book was written in this format it would have been much better.

If you want to learn, then learn from the best. This book tells it all. How Harley Davidson managed to turn their company around is an inspiration to companies struggling in the instability of our current economy. Very interesting details on how they achieved their popularity they now hold over the mainstream of Americans today.

This is an excellent story told in easy to read fashion. It details the comeback company of the 1990's if you ask me; Harley Davidson is. I've read it 2 times and working on the third time now. I'm not a business major since the book is business classified. I just Love Harley Davidson and read all I can about this wonder.