Search results

Excellent companies in the automative finance industry are considered so because of, among other things, their financial strength. In order for these companies to have achieved such status there have been strategies successfully executed by a committed workforce. Policies and procedures have been put in place in each company that ensures that employees are afforded certain basic benefits that protect their livelihood and others that reach beyond to create a more attractive environment that will help guarantee a long relationship between company and employee. The employee benefits of Toyota Motor Credit Corporation, Ford Motor Credit and Nissan Motors Acceptance Corporation are explored here in an effort to illustrate why these companies have succeeded, why some have succeeded more than others and, very importantly, how these companies are affected by the benefits that are put in place as a means of achieving long term success.

This paper examines whether or not the close relationship between buyers and suppliers in the Japanese automotive industry was also the norm in the electronic equipment and office machine industries. The results indicate that it was not. In fact, the level of integration between buyers and suppliers in Japan was even lower than in the U.S. American buyers were more likely than their Japanese counterparts to provide technical, financial, and managerial assistance. American buyers and suppliers were also more likely to participate in joint R&D projects. However, Japanese buyers placed greater emphasis upon trust‐building activities such as developing long‐term relationships, dedicating funds to customized investments, and making frequent face‐to‐face contact. The research findings point to the danger in generalizing about the entire Japanese economy based upon the record of the Japanese automotive keiretsu. At the very least, the Japanese electronic industry does appear to be open to outside suppliers.

This paper aims to describe the results of an investigation into the techniques used to design factory control systems in the body‐in‐white section of car‐manufacturing plants in Germany, the UK and the USA.

Research was conducted through a set of semi‐structured interviews with the individuals responsible for planning control system architectures in a number of companies world‐wide.

The challenges faced by the users of industrial control systems, such as the need to conduct changes quickly, accurately and without errors, are identified. Each organisation participating in this study was seen to use a company‐specific standard to bring commonality to systems and to improve the ease of developing, maintaining and modifying their control systems. Similar software structures were seen to be in use in many of the companies participating in this survey, though in some cases differing attitudes to the use of the same tools were observed.

This work captures, documents and reviews industrial practice in a structured manner, providing an insight into the factors affecting the selection of control system technology by industrial users, and serves as a starting‐point for researchers wishing to investigate the relative importance to industrial practitioners.

Existing work on industrial programming practice is extended by detailing specific software structures used in manufacturing operations in the car industry.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for evaluating and comparing supply chain relationships, specifically when, small and medium scale enterprise (SME) is considered as focal company.

The paper proposes a mathematical solution based on interpretive structural modeling and graph theory matrix to determine the supply chain relationship index. The application is demonstrated for the case of Indian automotive SMEs based on the secondary data reported.

Solution determines supply chain buyer‐supplier index for upstream and downstream. Based on which coefficient of similarity and dissimilarity are determined to evaluate the net pool of buyer‐supplier relationship on focal small and medium scale automotive component manufacturing industry.

Developed approach and results will help SMEs in general and Indian automobile component manufacturing SMEs to rethink on their supply chain relationships and identify the reasons behind their present failures and establish the criteria for win‐win partnership.

The paper addresses the following issues: how buyer‐supplier relationships can be quantified and the impact measured for the present working of focal SME; how SMEs can convince upstream and down stream supply chain players to initiate improvement on some dimensions of buyer‐supplier relationships; and on what basis change in relationships (from transactional to alliance) can be made to minimize the supply chain pressure on a focal company.

IT is accorded a central role in Malaysian Industrial Master Plan 2 (IMP2), not only as the foundation for the future development of the manufacturing sector, but also, as the engine of development and growth of other sectors of the economy. To fulfill this central role, what should be the value of IT Products and IT Services? We have computed the necessary capital stock of IT Products at RM21.556 billion in 1978 prices, each unit of which is to produce five times its value in output in the year 2005, for a start. The targeted output of IT Services would be another RM 21.556 billion in 1978 prices, for a total of RM43.112 billion for IT industry in 2005. Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, holds that Broadband Network Technology (BNT) indispensable to implement the Information Highway would not be available to most US homes for at least a decade. No matter when BNT arrives, an overriding question is: what will be the UTILIZATION of the exploding multimedia content of the Information Superskyway. How will people USE 1,000 times the current content, arriving 1,000 times as fast? The raison d'etre of the Information Superskyway is the Matrix of Learning, with Content as the rows, Context as the columns, and Learning as the Cells. The user has to identify his (her) context of use (entertain‐ment, education, enlightenment, edification). Investment in input (con‐tent) will depend on the answer to the question: By how much will the context be impaired by delay or deficiency of the content (data)? As the capacity of chips increases exponentially, the price drops dramatically — already it is down to $0.14 per megabyte! In the future, a holographic memory of the size of one's fists could hold the contents of the entire Library of Congress. With fast and furious developments in transfer and transformation of multi‐media content, how should one go about investing in IT to reap the bounty of BNT? We have no guarantee of success; we can increase the probability of success in the long‐run using seven IT investment Considerations/Criteria: (1) Choose the “Long‐run” that is realistic: Consider the odds against surviving one year, let alone 10 years; and choose wisely. (2) Choose Your Segment of the IT Industry: Are you most competent in: communications, computers, or content industries? What is your primary product: information, education, enlightenment, shopping, or e‐mail? (3) Choose Your CONCOL competitor/collaborator in the IT Industry: No matter how powerful you are in your chosen segment of the industry, it is almost mandatory that you collaborate with some other(s) in your own industry, and/or in another of the C3 industries. Bill Gates says: “companies must be able to partner on some projects and compete vigorously in others. Few companies in the computer and communications industries are purely friends or purely foes.” (4) Choose the Technology/Territory Area for CONCOL: How will the CONCOLs be formed and dissolved‐in: (1) Technology, (2) Territory? The choice of future technology would depend on the territory: How long would it take for the particular technology to develop a mass market? In IT parlance, should we back advances in: (I) transfer of data, or (2) transformation of data? (5) Choose the Technology Transformation Profile: Visualizing technology say, five generations ahead would indeed be quite hard and hazardous. But we would choose linear extensions of performance characteristics over Quantum jumps. However, PC industry experience suggests that each successive computer generation tended to provide Quantum jumps, little of the earlier models being useable with the new generation. (6) Choose the Technology Transfer Sequence: By establishing a relationship with the techtransferor over the long‐term, and scrupulously observing the mutually‐agreed conditions of techtransfer, the transferee can steadily increase its technical competence. (7) Fiercely Focus on the UTILIZATION of the Exploding Multime‐dia Content: To make IT win in the marketplace, the mere increase in the volume of content or the mere increase in the speed of its transmission is quite inadequate. What will make the difference is the learning that is made possible by the multimedia content and communication.

IT is important to open this editorial with an affirmation of faith. It is this:

EMO (the acronym for Exposition de la Machine Outil) is the biennial machine tool exhibition. It is held at the Hannover trade fair complex every fourth year. On alternate fourth years the venue is either Paris or Milan.

The importance of quality costs and benefits is sometimes not recognised by industrial managers. Quality costs money but the benefits which accrue are elusive and hard to quantify. The way in which quality costs have been regarded in the past are reviewed and the old basis challenged. A new basis for recognising and exploiting quality benefits is proposed.

The need for firms to become more innovative has probably never been greater. Today concepts such as the new economy, new technologies, hyper‐competition and clock speed are used to explain that the dynamics of competition and markets has never been greater. Thus, there is a large focus on the concept of innovation management in firms. Discusses innovation management, understood as being the activities that firms undertake in order to yield new solutions within products, production and administration. The main contribution is a discussion of how a general framework for innovation management can be tailored to individual situations/different firms.