As the auto industry moves into its second century, it suffers from low                  margins and a sclerotic value chain that cannot evolve with customer desires.                  Inventories of many weeks pile up on dealer lots and at distribution centers around                  the world while executives applaud marginal improvements in factory efficiency.Value                  streams based on Henry Ford's mass-production model from the early 1900s do not                  deliver the strategic flexibility that is needed in today's increasingly competitive                  and demanding market. With billions of potential product variations, customers still                  compromise by selecting from a limited number of products sitting at dealerships or                  at distribution centers. Those customers who dare insist on a specific variation not                  only wait weeks but also pay extra for the privilege of telling vehicle                  manufacturers what they actually want.In The Second Century, Matthias Holweg and                  Frits Pil provide a comprehensive look at today's dysfunctional value-chain                  strategies, then systematically discuss the changes in products and in processes                  that are needed to bring about responsiveness to customer needs through                  build-to-order. They look beyond the dealer, the factory and the design studio to                  examine the web of relationships and dynamics that have brought the auto industry to                  its current low point.Holweg and Pil argue that in this century the winners will not                  be those firms that search for larger and larger scale or those who run efficient                  factories, or those that squeeze the last drop of profitability from their                  suppliers. The winners, they say, will be those who build products as if customers                  mattered.

The Second Century: Reconnecting Customer and Value Chain through Build-to-Order; Moving beyond Mass and Lean Production in the Auto Industry PDF

The list of books you might like