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

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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September 17, 2009

Five Questions Facing European Manufacturing CIOs

Finally the summer has come to an end. Traffic is back in Parisian roads and the early morning London-Frankfurt flights are full again. It was a different summer in many ways. First England won back the Ashes. Then there is more hope about economy in general and General Motors in particular in comparison to last summer when Lehman folded. On a more mundane note, in my 10 years in Europe, this was the  most hectic August.  Over a span of 6 weeks, I had the privilege of meeting several senior IT leaders across automotive, aerospace, chemicals, machine manufacturing, high tech and defence companies in Europe. I am going to share some of the exciting discussions I had in this space, starting with the five questions that I heard CIOs are asking as they cautiously prepare for post-recession economy.

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