death_date death_place birth_place name birth_date known_for image article_title birth_name alma_mater
29 november 2007 detroit , michigan , usa columbus , ohio , usa roger smith 12 july 1925 chairman and ceo of general motors roger smith.jpg roger smith -lrb- executive -rrb-
 roger bonham smith university of michigan
roger smith -lrb- executive -rrb-

roger bonham smith -lrb- july 12 , 1925 -- november 29 , 2007 -rrb- was the chairman and ceo of general motors corporation from 1981 to 1990 , and is widely known as the main subject of michael moore 's 1989 documentary film `` roger & me '' .
smith seemed to be the last of the old-line gm chairmen , a conservative anonymous bureaucrat , resisting change .
however , propelled by industry and market conditions , smith oversaw some of the most fundamental changes in gm 's history .
when smith took over gm , it was reeling from its first annual loss since the early 1920s .
its reputation had been tarnished by lawsuits , persistent quality problems , bad labor relations , public protests over the installation of chevrolet engines in oldsmobiles , and by a poorly designed diesel engine .
gm was also losing market share to foreign automakers for the first time .
deciding that gm needed to completely change its structure in order to be competitive , smith instituted a sweeping transformation .
initiatives included divisional consolidation , forming strategic joint ventures with japanese and korean automakers , launching the saturn division , investing heavily in technological automation and robotics , and attempting to rid the company of its risk-averse bureaucracy .
however , smith 's far-reaching goals proved too ambitious to be implemented effectively in the face of the company 's resistant corporate culture .
despite smith 's vision , he was unable to successfully integrate gm 's major acquisitions and failed to tackle the root causes of gm 's fundamental problems .
a controversial figure widely associated with gm 's decline , smith 's tenure is commonly viewed as a failure , as gm 's share of the us market fell from 46 % to 35 % and the company lapsed close to bankruptcy during the early 1990s recession .
consequently , cnbc has called smith one of the `` worst american ceos of all time '' , stating , `` smith ... had the right idea but may have lacked the intuition to understand how his rip-up-the-carpet redo would affect the delicate web of informal communication that gm relied upon . ''
in 2013 , he was included on `` fortune `` s list of the `` 10 worst auto chiefs '' , with writer alex taylor iii stating , '' -lsb- ... -rsb- he wasted billions trying to revive the sagging giant through diversification -lrb- eds and hughes -rrb- , automation -lrb- robotized factories -rrb- , reorganization -lrb- two superdivisions b-o-c and c-p-c -rrb- , commonization -lrb- gm-10 cars -rrb- and experimentation -lrb- saturn -rrb- .
smith 's legacy was a fleet of low-quality , lookalike autos , an unqualified successor , and a mountain of debt that pushed the company close to bankruptcy in 1992 . ''
smith and his legacy remain subjects of considerable interest and debate among automotive writers and historians .
