Discuss trends and ideas on issues around the high-tech, industrial, aerospace & defense, automotive, and process manufacturing industries

February 22, 2010

Top 5 trends in Automotive Industry of 2010

The writing is clear on the wall…. Toyota at the helm of automotive industry has been bitten large by the recall bug. And that’s not just because of being at the top, but unforeseen to most admirers, because of the forced diversion from its basic tenets of lean. And the other warlords like GM and Ford has its back against the wall still scouting for buyers for Pontiac , while literally surrendering to lesser mortals like Sichuan Tengzhong and Zhejiang Geely of China to shed its overladen baggage of Hummer and Volvo cars respectively, having tasted bitter pills with its deals with Magna for Opel and Vauxhall, Roger Penske for Saturn and Spyker for SAAB. VW, the European biggie had to tie-up with Suzuki Motors through a 20% stakes and Engineering collaboration for next-generation mini-car, possibly Alto, to capture Indian market. Renault has similar plans of shrinking European market and wants to enter China with Nissan’s help to reach the 1 million magic figures in China. Chrysler which has a close relationship with Fiat has planned its product plan till 2014 with amalgamation of Fiat platforms in Chrysler’s brands like Dodge and Jeep by 2013.  With these far reaching changes sweeping the industry there are some converging trends which emerge in the automotive industry in 2010

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November 03, 2009

Do variety wishes of shoppers always corner the manufacturers?

Shoppers  across the world, whether they are buying toys  from roadside hawkers or investing in capital goods to be shipped from abroad, always look for variety! They cherish variety in products, variety in prices, variety in delivery of goods and of course variety in service.  The customers always want that the choice should reside with them. In the wake of such variety-prone world, manufacturers are forced to adopt “variety” to a large extent to meet the market forces. But these manufacturers would not leave a chance to sneak in “variety” in certain other quarters to manage their efficiencies. The manufacturer is thus not just driven by variety, but also drives variety. The classical economic theory of supply and demand “match-point” being the price decider …… has to be rewritten. In today’s economy it is the driven-to-driver variety intersection which determines price of the manufactured products.

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Posted by Sudripto De at 05:09 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)