Referring to his company's own industry - car making - he said productivity was "not what it should be".

Productivity has been highlighted by government ministers as an area which needs to be tackled by business.

Last week, a survey by management consultants McKinsey pointed to poor productivity in many sectors of British industry.

Alex Trotman has warned of job losses

Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry's annual conference, Sir Alex said the repercussions of this were being seen with new layoffs announced almost every week.

The globalisation of trade and the downturn in the world economy meant competition was even more fierce and improved productivity was even more essential.

He said a little effort could go a long way, citing Jaguar as one of his favourite examples of what could be achieved.

The company set out to be world-class competitors nine years ago and have since quadrupled productivity, raised their quality from near-bottom to near the top in the world, set sales records and returned to profitability.

"It's not rocket science. It's vision, then commitment and then execution. Once you accept that you're uncompetitive, you benchmark the best, then run faster than the others to deliver the goods, he said.

Global dogfight

In his company's own industry, Sir Alex said there was a "global dogfight" under way because of markets being opened up and overcapacity.

By 2002 Ford predicts that excess capacity will rise to 22m vehicles.

Sir Alex repeated his prediction of massive industry consolidation, with mergers, acquisitions and outright failures.

He said Daimler's acquisition of Chrysler was "simply the latest - and biggest - event in a process that's been under way for years."

He said the car industry had overcapacity of some 40%, the equivalent of 80 modern, high-volume plants sitting idle.

Sir Alex predicted that there would only be six car firms in the next century - two with corporate headquarters in America, two in Europe and two in Japan.

He urged all firms to have a global perspective, however small they were as all firms should be sensitive to global developments.