Nucor at a Crossroads Book Review

With roots dating back to 1904 in the automobile manufacturing industry, Nucor’s business strategy has morphed many times over the course of the past century in response to struggling sales and unrealized business strategies. Since F. Kenneth Iverson’s appointment as Nucor’s President in 1965, however, Nucor has performed very well. With a focus on efficiency, Nucor is committed to minimizing bureaucracy and maximizing performance and productivity via the utilization of an open-door/continuous improvement/ entrepreneurial culture, a compensation scheme premised on performance-based incentives, and — last, but not least —commitment to technological advancement.

With this approach, in an industry with 36 different companies, Nucor enjoyed the second largest market share in 1986, with 16 plants and an annual production capacity of 2.1 million tons of steel. In 1985, Nucor was ranked the most productive steel-maker in the United States and the second most productive in the world, averaging 981 tons per employee, per year. Nucor managed to achieve this success using a low-cost strategy, which proved to be particularly suitable in the highly competitive, commodity-like steel industry.