Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) CEO Alan Mulally has a grand master plan to return Ford back to profitability by 2009, and he's making tons of cost-cutting and marketing moves to get there. Even with former Boeing exec Mulally at the helm, turning around Ford is no easy task seeing as that the company just had one of the worst years in its entire history. Too many workers, too many factories, not enough sales and an incorrect product mix. Add all that together along with the inability to react fast enough to market changes and Ford set itself up for failure.

Part of Mulally's plan to get Ford back on track is the "rightsizing" of the employee base. The CEO would like to see the number of employees more closely aligned with the needs of the company. He wants to ensure the right employee base can get the right amount of vehicles -- that customers want -- out the door and onto dealer lots just as demand materializes. So far, about 27,000 hourly workers have left Ford in the last year, with most of them having accepted buyout and early retirement packages. This was planned, of course, and the retirement and buyout strategy has worked well for Ford. Right now, there are about 10,000 workers left at Ford who signed up for the early retirement packages but who have yet to leave the company (a total of 37,00 employees signed up for it).

Mulally's "Way Forward" plan is set to take Ford into the future using long-term vision and ultimate flexibility, and so far the CEO is getting there as well he should be (seeing as the board granted him more than $17 million just to recruit him for the job before he had done anything). So far, Ford investors are probably liking what Mulally has done to get the Ford ship turned around, although there is much work to be done. If current results are any indication, it's already doing a good job with its products.

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