ادغام خدمات خودرویی و استراتژی های فناوری

Automotive after sales service is a highly profitable business. Nevertheless, service providers have to deal with an increasing range of variants of products and technologies, shorter life cycles and changing customer demands. In spite of these manifold challenges, after sales departments are often not involved in the early product development stage, nor are customer demands and technical parameters fully considered in the service development processes. Therefore, an integration of service and technology strategies is necessary. This paper presents a framework for this integration that visualises the complex interdependencies and interfaces between service as well as product and car workshop technologies.

Organisational and technical challenges are determined by the interaction of different factors. Cross-linked thinking is a method for the analysis of the interdependencies (Fig. 1). For example the higher the economic success is, the higher is the technical progress. New markets mean rising investments and innovation. A problem-adequate form of organisation is a precondition for a good strategic position and economic success [1].The automotive industry but also other industries are embedded in a rapidly changing environment (Fig. 2). Rising variant variety and/or rising individualisation of vehicles are determined by the possibility for differentiation in competitive markets. Moreover, they are affected by the customer demand for individualised products. Further on, the technological progress of producing variants or customer individual vehicles has to be economical.Increased competition as well as increased customer demands also lead to faster implementation of new technologies in vehicles [2]. As a result, the development towards a highly diversified automotive market is accompanied by a continuous acceleration of product cycles and growing product complexity [3] (Fig. 3).The outlined development leads to radical changes in the service and after-sales markets. Today, service intervals of 15,000 miles or more are usual (Fig. 4). The amount of electronics in vehicles has increased dramatically over the last decades [4] and [5]. But at the same time the product life span remained unchanged or even easily rose (12–15 years). As a consequence, new car workshop technologies are required and new challenges for an effective spare part management of electronic components after the end of production exist [4].As the customer expects high product availability, the increased product complexity requires an appropriate service offer. An adequate service organisation and the ability to handle different vehicle technologies efficiently are necessary. Apart from the relevance regarding brand image and customer loyalty, also economic success is also determined crucially by the service. Apart from the actual service achievement the sale of spare parts determines the turnover of automotive companies to a large share. On the whole, the different factors result in a strong pressure on companies regarding innovation and costs on the companies, and the constraint to market the innovative products in a short period of time [2]. Due to this, service is becoming a reservoir of challenges from a technological as well as organisational point of view. Because service technology and service organisation are not merely single tasks, but strongly geared, both disciplines are connected in this paper. Initially, basics concerning technology and service have to be defined.

The framework shows how the disciplines roadmapping and service engineering interact and during which phases of a cyclic work flow data is transferred. The exemplary application illustrates that especially the Vehicle Technology/After Sales Service Objectives-Matrix functions as a manageable tool to facilitate the process of exchange. Nevertheless, meaningful data has to be available to create automotive after sales roadmaps and competitive car workshop formats. The challenges are on the one hand supporting processes, which supply the planning teams with the right information, in the right place and at the right time. On the other hand, the culture within the company has to be a culture of change. Cross-functional teams with different backgrounds and objectives need to interact and share knowledge.