The current economic downturn is generating significant uncertainty for companies in the automotive industry. With the credit crunch and cash-flow issues, volatile energy and raw materials costs, and the "brain drain" resulting from layoffs and early retirements, automotive companies are dealing with an unprecedented set of challenges.
The question automotive manufacturers and suppliers are asking themselves right now is, how can we not only survive this economic downturn, but emerge from it even stronger?
Microsoft can help answer that question with low-cost, high-value technology solutions to help your organization accelerate innovation, better manage operations and the supply chain, and grow customer relationships.
Accelerate innovation
With the upheaval in the market and changing customer needs, now more than ever, companies need to innovate to remain viable. New ideas uncover emerging markets; create new businesses, products, and jobs; and improve productivity. A process for managing and capturing new ideas and a method for determining which ideas to pursue are crucial to a successful innovation cycle. They're also crucial to capturing and storing the intellectual property that exists in the minds of your people, so that when employees leave your workforce, all of their knowledge doesn't leave with them.
Microsoft and our partners offer a powerful, low-cost platform for collecting, analyzing, and monitoring the progress of your "idea factory"-using components you might already own. Microsoft enterprise content management and search, portfolio management, collaboration, and data management solutions can help your organization capture ideas, assess their potential, and drive the right ones to market as quickly as possible.
For example, BMW AG relies on technology to help it maintain its reputation for innovation. With more than 100,000 people worldwide and 24 production sites in 13 countries, BMW's project teams depend on communication and collaboration to design new products and bring them into production. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 enables employees to improve productivity and efficiently communicate across continents, helping to speed project completion. Quickly bringing innovative, new models into production is critical to maintaining the company's edge against competitors.
Build higher-quality products with fewer resources
Many automotive manufacturers and suppliers are reducing their manufacturing footprint. This means they have to do more with less by improving productivity and reducing waste. Microsoft and our partners provide a full range of manufacturing visibility solutions that help people improve operations by identifying potential problems and gaining insight, so they can take action to reduce inefficiencies and streamline production. These solutions are delivered through the Microsoft Office system and its familiar programs, such as Microsoft Office Word and Office Excel. Empowering users with role-based access to important business data and greater visibility and insight into business operations helps them improve performance at strategic, tactical, and organizational levels.
For example, using Microsoft technologies, Accuride, one of the largest manufacturers of components for commercial vehicles in North America, is streamlining production and delivering more value to customers by providing them with visibility into certain manufacturing processes. The solution Accuride is using provides a user-friendly scheduling application and a portal that gives external parties visibility into manufacturing status.
Improve performance with supply chain visibility and collaboration
Although supply chain management is a long-term strategy, many companies take short-term actions to thrive in difficult economic times. Automotive manufacturers are more reliant on partners and suppliers than ever before as they shift to contract manufacturing and component supply, allowing them to increase their focus on core competencies. To effectively manage these new partnerships and supplier relationships, visibility and collaboration along the supply chain are critical.
The Microsoft platform provides a collaboration and visibility layer delivered in familiar Microsoft tools. With Microsoft solutions such as business intelligence, collaboration, business process, and radio frequency identification (RFID), automotive companies can surface data from underlying systems across a heterogeneous IT landscape-including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and legacy, planning, and shop floor systems-and extended partners. These solutions also put supply chain data into the hands of "difference makers," improve workforce agility and supply chain relationships, and capture and integrate real-time events into supply chain decision making.
For example, Voith Turbo, which is part of the Voith Group, one of Germany's largest privately held industrial groups, uses Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP software to give employees across the organization a view of accurate data on stock levels. Voith Turbo, which specializes in high-precision drive mechanisms for engines for customers that include MAN AG, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo, has 39 international distribution centers. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, employees at all the centers have a single view of data that helps them more accurately monitor stock levels and distribute materials efficiently.
Grow customer relationships
In a downturn, maintaining and growing customer relationships are as critical as ever. More and better interactions with customers helps manufacturers build the products customers want and will purchase. Knowing your customers better also helps you deliver more effective marketing and sales campaigns. Microsoft offers a combination of customer relationship management and analytics solutions to help companies build more responsive relationships across a variety of sales and service channels.
One of those channels is the Internet, of course. For example, ToyotaFishing.com is a microsite that targets fishing enthusiasts and helps promote the Toyota Tundra pickup brand. Originally developed in Flash in 2007, the site performed poorly in search engines, so was difficult for customers to find. To improve search engine optimization, iCrossing rearchitected ToyotaFishing.com in April 2008 using Microsoft Silverlight. This move significantly enhanced the Web site's ability to be discovered by search engines and dramatically streamlined site updates. Switching from Flash to Silverlight helped Toyota reach a much larger audience with its marketing efforts.
