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中国制造的“软肋” -- 夜归人 - (2763 Byte) 2006-7-06 周四, 21:21 (1898 reads) |
过江蛇
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作者：过江蛇 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
HEADLINE: The masters of good service
BYLINE: Peter Marsh
BODY:
How does a business make itself "China-proof"? As China's manufacturing prowess has grown in the past decade, companies in the high-cost regions of western Europe, north America and Japan have had to find ways to gain an upper hand on lower-cost rivals there or risk being driven out of business.
In this competitive battle, companies have adopted a number of strategies. Some have concentrated on narrow product niches that few others can match, or have invested in highly productive automated machinery that reduces the disadvantages of high labour costs.
Others have added a "service" component to their product, tethering supplier to customer through an intangible benefit the nature of which is often defined only after intensive discussion between customer and supplier that a rival in China would find difficult to reproduce.
A manufacturer becomes, in effect, a chameleon. It is likely to take on at least one of these roles: consultant, requiring it to play a part in specifying the product that the customer needs, and maintaining the product once in service; distributor, giving it responsibility for "just-in-time" delivery; accountant, since the manufacturer has a key role on pricing; and designer, taking on the development of new products.
A competition in the UK, the results of which were announced last night, sheds light on how manufacturers can forge all four such service strategies. The contest is organised by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers and is repeated annually to find the best examples of manufacturing in Britain.
The winner of the main award for "manufacturing excellence" is South Yorkshire-based AES Engineering, one of the five largest companies in the world in "engineering seals" mechanical devices added to rotating machines such as pumps to stop fluids leaking out. Due to the nature of its business, which involves specifying seals in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, AES has become as much a consultant as a manufacturer.
AES has sales of about GBP60m ($109m) a year, with virtually all its manufacturing in the UK but 80 per cent of revenues coming from outside, with the US as its biggest market.
Chris Rea, AES chairman and owner, says "service" is a vital part of the company's strategy. Of the company's 920 employees, just under half are in service-related jobs most concerned with specifying the nature of the seal that AES will make for individual customers from 20m possible types.
Mr Rea says that, in some cases, a quarter of the price it charges for a seal is a "service" payment that covers the cost of specifying the seal plus the "after-care" that AES also provides through visiting its customers' premises (once the seal is installed) to advise on updates and to ensure equipment is working properly.
"Our product is not a commodity," says Mr Rea. "We believe our customers need an element of consultancy to make sure they get the best value from what we can provide." Could a Chinese company in theory do the same thing? Mr Rea believes the answer is "yes" but so far such a business has yet to make its presence felt on a global basis.
Power Panels, based in Walsall, central England, is the winner of the IMechE award for the best small to medium-sized business and is another manufacturer that has also become a service company in its case a distributor or delivery agent.
With 170 employees and annual sales of GBP13m, the company makes assemblies of electrical cabling systems used in the control systems of machinery such as machine tools and packaging and weighing equipment. Making such assemblies is a straightforward job and appears in theory to be just the kind of manufacturing activity that it would be pointless to attempt in a high-cost nation such as the UK. Competitors in China could do it at a much lower price.
But this ignores Power Panels' successful service tactic. It forms alliances with a number of key customers most of which have plants in the UK that need reliable shipments of electrical assemblies on a "just-in-time" basis to fit in with their own highly variable production schedules.
These customers include the UK operations of Yamazaki Mazak and Ishida, Japanese groups that make machine tools and weighing machines respectively, and DEK International and Aixtron, which are respectively US and German-owned makers of production machines for electronics.
"Our customers make machines that vary a lot and are produced in low volumes of just five to 120 a month, and we tailor our business accordingly to meet their needs," says Tony Hague, Power Panels' managing director. He says it is "unlikely" that a Chinese rival with shipment times so much longer would be able to replicate what Power Panels does.
Another winner of an IMechE award for best use of information technology is Protomold, based in Telford, in the west of England, and a subsidiary of a US company. Protomold, which turns out plastic products for a variety of industries, has used clever software to cost its products in a way that an accountancy firm would recognise.
The business started last year with an investment of GBP800,000 takes enquiries from customers over the internet and, within hours, provides prices and a delivery schedule.
The "accountancy" part of the software is linked to program codes that once the customer has accepted the financial quote generate three-dimensional images of what products will look like. These are turned into instructions for the automated machinery that makes the components in Protomold's factory.
"Within three days we can design tools for producing the parts and get them back to the customer," says Damian Hennessey, commercial manager.
A further manufacturer to pick up an award for product development is UK-owned Wrightbus, based in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. With sales of about GBP100m a year, Wrightbus is one of Europe's leading makers of bus bodies. It has managed to ward off a competitive threat from China by putting a big emphasis on design.
"We have to be a lot more than a bus builder. We have to work on new technologies, from new methods for fabricating plastic, to telecoms systems that we can install in our buses to enable controllers to track where vehicles are and organise their operations more effectively," says Mark Nodder, head of business development.
The company has 50 product development engineers and spends about about5 per cent of its sales on design and development a relatively high percentage for an engineering group.
It is a large supplier of buses to Kowloon Motor Bus Company in Hong Kong, among the world's biggest bus operating companies.
"Kowloon is not far from a lot of competing China-based bus companies," says Mr Nodder. "But we reckon we can provide something different and to high quality that our competitors even in China cannot match. The day we start supplying bog-standard buses that everyone else can make is the day we start to see our business begin to disappear."
The lesson from Wrightbus and others is that low-cost competition may be less of a worry if companies can learn to link production disciplines to service-style thinking.
HOW TO MAKE HIGHER-COST COMPANIES CHINA-PROOF
Several popular approaches to service-based manufacturing are exemplified by the winners of a competition organised by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers:
Consultancy. Manufacturers can benefit from helping customers specify the products they need and providing after-care and technical updates. AES Engineering helps its customers specify seals from up to 20m variants.
Alliances. Producers of standardised goods can steal a march over far-flung rivals by providing carefully chosen customers with higher levels of service. Power Panels, a distributor of cabling systems, offers a just-in-time service for companies with variable production schedules.
Technology. Companies can use internet-based systems and design technology to reduce turnround time for new products. Protomold, a plastic products maker, uses its software expertise to offer costing and delivery schedules for complex orders within hours of receiving them.
Design. Higher investment in design and development can help manufacturers dominate less inventive rivals. Wrightbus, maker of bus bodies, has exploited its design nous to sell buses around the world, including in Hong Kong.
LOAD-DATE: 29 June 2006
作者：过江蛇 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 中国制造的“软肋” -- 夜归人 - (2763 Byte) 2006-7-06 周四, 21:21 (1898 reads) - 夜归人, 你转的贴子都挺不错的...我贴一个英文版 -- 过江蛇 - (8724 Byte) 2006-7-06 周四, 23:13 (361 reads)
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