Cambridge-MIT Institute publishes ‘Who killed MG Rover’ Report

The Cambridge-MIT Institute’s Centre for Competitiveness and Innovation (CCI), at the University of Cambridge has published a 33-page report investigating the final collapse of the MG-Rover in April 2005. Report authors Dr Matthias Holweg and Professor Nick Oliver investigate the final collapse of MG-Rover in April 2005, and address two main questions. First, what were the reasons for the final collapse, and was this avoidable? Second, who or what was responsible for the circumstances that put MG Rover in such a precarious position, and what critical choices sealed the fate of Rover?

Dr Holweg and Prof Oliver conclude that by the time the Phoenix consortium took over, the fate of Rover was largely sealed. The company’s collapse was a culmination of a process that started more than five decades ago that included: a failure to consolidate previously independent companies quickly enough; a persistent inability to develop products that hit the right markets at the right prices; the unfortunate severance with Honda and BMW’s inability to address Rover’s underlying weaknesses.

Matthias Holweg, MSc PhD, is a lecturer in operations management at the Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge, and a principal investigator of MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP). Co-author Nick Oliver, MA PhD, is a professor at the Judge Institute of Management and co-director of the Cambridge-MIT Institute’s Centre for Competitiveness and Innovation. His research interests are high performance manufacturing and the new product development process, with a particular reference to the motor industry.

The report can be downloaded from: http://www-innovation.jims.cam.ac.uk/downloads/rover_report.pdf