World Briefing

By Julie Rawe; Daren Fonda

Bill Ford Changes Tires

He prefers to describe last month's management changes as a "fine-tuning" rather than a "shake-up." But whatever term the scion of sedans wants to use, Bill Ford effectively booted the two Brits fighting over who gets to ride shotgun. Nick Scheele, 60, is relinquishing his role as COO and getting kicked upstairs as company president, while David Thursfield, 58, head of international operations and global purchasing, is simply getting kicked to the curb, with his retirement effective May 1. Meanwhile, Jim Padilla, 57, the Detroit native in charge of the company's Americas division, is taking the role of COO and much of the credit for Ford's $6 billion swing into profitability over the past two years. Padilla's push for quality helped the firm pull ahead of Volkswagen and Nissan in the latest J.D. Power & Associates survey. But Ford has to get a lot better to remain competitive. It still trails DaimlerChrysler and General Motors, not to mention the industry average, in the Power quality rankings. Padilla, who was also named chairman of automotive operations, needs to revive the faltering Mercury and Lincoln brands and accelerate Ford's slow recovery in Europe. Some joyride. With reporting by Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit

Why Toyota Is Tops

Is Toyota the world's greatest manufacturer? In the auto industry, in which the company consistently books record profits and sets the standard for quality, Toyota's supremacy is unquestioned. Author Jeffrey Liker, however, makes a compelling case in The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer that the carmaker isn't just the best in class but, "through decades of learning and hard work," trounces even companies like Dell as a model of efficient and profitable production.

An engineering professor at the University of Michigan, Liker argues that Toyota is unique in that it doesn't "mistake lean tools for lean thinking." Its employees show an almost cultlike devotion to eliminating waste, speeding the assembly process and boosting quality controls at every step. Simple as that might sound, most firms that try to copy the Toyota way (and many have tried) fail because they don't have the discipline to stick with it. That may not be the best message when you're trying to sell a corporate diet book. Unlike many diet books, though, at least it's honest about what it takes to stay lean over the long run. --By Daren Fonda

Don't Get Lost in Space

The good news for stargazers is that prices for computerized telescopes are no longer out of sight. These smart scopes use go-to technology to steer themselves to any of the thousands of heavenly objects you select using a handy remote control. Celestron's NexStar 102GT, for instance, debuting this month with a $400 price tag, includes a motorized mount to track objects as Earth rotates (so you don't have to keep recentering the scope) and a preprogrammed celestial tour to guide you to the coolest objects visible each night, based on the location you input. The bad news: Celestron's tech support doesn't work nights. (Earth to Celestron: Wake up.) Also, at 14 lbs., the 4-in. scope is extremely portable, but each time you relocate to see past, say, a tree, you'll have to help the scope reorient itself. That may take a couple of minutes, but it beats shelling out a few grand for a model that uses GPS for self-alignment.

Prince Of P.R.

Investment tycoon, liberal reformer, world's fourth richest person--Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is a man of many kaffiyehs, and he's adding another: advertiser. In April, Kingdom Holding Co., the $21 billion investment firm that Alwaleed runs, started advertising itself on CNN and CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and other media. The ads highlight Kingdom's stakes in a dozen megafirms, such as Citigroup, PepsiCo, News Corp. and Four Seasons Hotels, and include the tag line "Reaching out through global investments." To some, it sounded as if the U.S.-educated prince was trying to use commercials to prepare the way for an IPO--and perhaps ease terrorism tensions between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. (It wasn't too long ago that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani rejected Alwaleed's $10 million donation to the families of 9/11 victims.) But Alwaleed told TIME the campaign is simply part of a strategy to further institutionalize a 25-year-old company that, although it employs just 32 people, is one of the biggest asset holders in the Middle East. "Everybody knows Prince Alwaleed, but no one knows Kingdom Holdings," he says. "Tomorrow, if I die, it will still be operating. It is not a one-man show." He denies rumors that he is planning to take the firm public. "It is not on the table at all," he says. --With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Riyadh

FRENCH REMEDY

The French are very territorial when it comes to champagne, ski resorts and, yes, pharmaceutical companies, which helps explain why the government strong-armed Sanofi-Synthelabo into sweetening a hostile bid for the Strasbourg-based Aventis--to create a French "national champion" in the pill market--and why the government warned Swiss drugmaker Novartis to stop fishing in the Rhine. Sanofi-Aventis will be the world's third largest pharmaceutical firm, after Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. But since the merger announcement, Sanofi's shares have tumbled, in part because investors think $66 billion is too high a price for Aventis, whose big moneymaker, the allergy medicine Allegra, not only competes with Claritin, which is sold over the counter in the U.S., but will soon also square off against several generic versions.

The Sanofi-Aventis deal may well be a side effect of the pharmaceutical industry's year-long market migraine, caused largely by expiring patents. There could be more mergers, but Merck, for one, seems to have hit on the less-than-acquisitive solution of partnering with companies that may have a blockbuster in the works. Last month it struck an alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop and sell an experimental diabetes drug, a joint venture similar to the one Merck formed with Schering-Plough for cholesterol treatments Zetia and Vytorin.

Boeing's 7E7: Made in Japan?

Troubled aerospace giant Boeing finally gained altitude when Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) announced it would order 50 7E7 planes--Boeing's first new commercial jetliner in more than a decade. It's also the first Boeing jet with a foreign airline as the launch customer. The 7E7 is a midsize plane with about 250 seats. Take-off date: 2008. Although the plane retails for $120 million, launch customers traditionally get a hefty discount. The news comes at a crucial time. Boeing last year stopped making the 26-year-old 757 and might halt the 717 and 767 production lines. It hasn't sold a new 747 passenger plane in two years. Industry experts point out that Boeing has ceded to the Japanese 35% of the 7E7's manufacture--an unprecedented role--and the Japanese government will subsidize some of the plane's building costs. Rival Airbus noted that contrary to usual practice, ANA had not even asked Airbus to compete. Before declaring the 7E7 a success, analysts are waiting to see if industry leaders like Emirates and Singapore Airlines order the plane. --By Sally B. Donnelly

With reporting by Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit; Scott MacLeod/RiyadhBy Sally B. Donnelly