CEO says BMW in “biggest crisis in its history"

[Suzie's Dad]

Originally Posted by dmlgc

"The carmakers have announced extended holiday shutdowns. Chrysler is closing all 30 of its North American manufacturing plants for four weeks because of slumping sales; Ford will shut 10 North American assembly plants for an extra week in January, and General Motors will temporarily close 20 factories — many for the entire month of January — to cut vehicle production."

Sorry -- you're correct. My eyes read "all 30 plants for one month" but my brain recorded "some plants for three months". I have Ctrl-Alt-Deleted my brain and it's back in gear now.

[dmlgc]

Originally Posted by Suzie's Dad

Sorry -- you're correct. My eyes read "all 30 plants for one month" but my brain recorded "some plants for three months". I have Ctrl-Alt-Deleted my brain and it's back in gear now.

No problem I do that all the time, I try not to do it while I'm driving I think in the long run you will be correct.

[JOHNBMWM5]

The thing is how will they dispose of all these stock piled Cars?, no one wants them and when the factorys reopen for production in a months time, these cars will still be there siting rotting in fields. So why make any more till they are all but sold?.

[xDrive50i]

Originally Posted by johnbmw6

The thing is how will they dispose of all these stock piled Cars?, no one wants them and when the factorys reopen for production in a months time, these cars will still be there siting rotting in fields. So why make any more till they are all but sold?.

Another issue or thing to consider is that they can't crank out 'new' car models over night either. They all promised that they will be making eco friendly cars, etc. but this will take time to go from design to production. On average I think that time frame is about two years... So what are they going to do in the meantime?

My guess is that they will just be making more of the same they have been building so far, so that 'stock pile' will get larger...

[akraptor]

So I wasn't that wrong when I said that unions need to get bitchslapped. .

30-75-150$/hour for manual work?!? on pieces of metal? following procedures that are not optional to each other's mental expertize or experience, but plainly and repeatedly engraved in the production manual. .. .and in their brains, in the training program. . not robots worth 1000 time their material (components) value. .

You know, back in the MBA classes in 93, I read the books of Kenichi Ohmae (which I also had the chance to meet personally and talk to him) one of the biggest economic strategists in the world. .described the situation of a robots manuf. plant in Hiroshima (I think it was in his best-seller "The Mind of the Strategist"). . He explained the case of Fujitsu Co. .

Fujitsu, some 20 years ago, at their plant in Hiroshima. .doh. . had 300 technicians working in dayshift. .Guess how many worked in the night shift?!? (24 hours work cycle)

. . . Hmmzz? Any wild guess??!

. . .

, . . .

. . . .

. . .Night shift?
. .

. .ONE (1) uno, just one controller. .

controlled the labour that 300 (no ref. to the movie) did during the day. .

in a control center, with endless process panels crammed with LED's that displayed the process flows, etc.

JUST one F. king dude. .

True. . it's a plant where ROBOTS BUILD ROBOTS. .those f. .kers don't need 150$/hour, nor pension plans, neither lunch breaks or holidays. .They either work endlessly or just implode.

And the CEO of Fujitsu at that time said that: they will remain competitive even if the yen will appreciate at about 90 to the $. (200 yen/$ at that time) . .so I guess today, they are still competitive, without pains in the groin. . at the actual exchange rate.

[akraptor]

Aaah, since now I got started . .let me tell ya what a chief engineer from Honda auto plant in Japan replied, when I asked publicly (meeting with Honda hotshots with 100 of my classmates) the following:

"What's the re-setup time of the assembly line if you want to switch on the run from the Accord assembly to the Civic?!?"

Obviously I got him into trouble () since he needed about 5 minutes to think out a response. . triiiiicky question. .


He said: "Well, about 15 minutes". .which is anyway mind-boggling. . .

But I believe it was less than that. .



PS: And the factory they allowed us to visit, was not their most modern one. . the only manual labor I saw (if I remember well) on their main assembly line . .was when fitting in the steering wheel. . anything else, was automated. .

[archwerks]

the days of building building 00's /000's of cars, on speculation should be eliminated. Cars should be built/ resources expended only if enough people orders it. All the cars sitting on docks & storage should be sent back to the factories & refitted w/hybrid engines. Give people more incentive to switch.

[akraptor]

Originally Posted by archwerks

the days of building building 00's /000's of cars, on speculation should be eliminated. Cars should be built/ resources expended only if enough people orders it. All the cars sitting on docks & storage should be sent back to the factories & refitted w/hybrid engines. Give people more incentive to switch.

Excellent idea. .

[Suzie's Dad]

Originally Posted by archwerks

the days of building building 00's /000's of cars, on speculation should be eliminated. Cars should be built/ resources expended only if enough people orders it. All the cars sitting on docks & storage should be sent back to the factories & refitted w/hybrid engines. Give people more incentive to switch.

When I visited the BMW Munich assembly plant ten years ago, they told us that virtually every car on the line was a special order, either from a dealer ordering for stock or because a customer had ordered it. BMW did not build any spec cars themselves.

In Japan, you can custom order a Nissan and have it delivered to you within four days. Dealers keep very few vehicles on the lot as space is so expensive.

But I'm not so sure about your remark about hybrids. Prius sales are down 50%. I'm not convinced people really want cars like that -- just some cutting-edge greenies, and they aren't representative of the population as a whole.

[Palbay]

Originally Posted by Suzie's Dad

When I visited the BMW Munich assembly plant ten years ago, they told us that virtually every car on the line was a special order, either from a dealer ordering for stock or because a customer had ordered it. BMW did not build any spec cars themselves.

In Japan, you can custom order a Nissan and have it delivered to you within four days. Dealers keep very few vehicles on the lot as space is so expensive.

But I'm not so sure about your remark about hybrids. Prius sales are down 50%. I'm not convinced people really want cars like that -- just some cutting-edge greenies, and they aren't representative of the population as a whole.

Same is true today....every car that goes out the door from a BMW plant is sold......as far as BMW AG is concerned.The car is presold to a dealer and by extension.....an end user retail customer.This method has been a lifesaver for BMW.Still does not protect jobs.....per se.....if no dealers,ie retail customers are buying......production numbers off the line will fall and you need less employees.BMW DOES NOT have the excess inventory problem that the Detroit big 2.5 have.BMW never allows an excess inventory to build.Thanks! PalBay

[Deda]

now i get it the japanese idea...in EU market ,for example nissan murano is fully loaded in series and only thing that you can choose in ordering is color...so if you have stock car they are only difffrent by color.

[akraptor]

Originally Posted by Suzie's Dad

In Japan, you can custom order a Nissan and have it delivered to you within four days. Dealers keep very few vehicles on the lot as space is so expensive.

But I'm not so sure about your remark about hybrids. Prius sales are down 50%. I'm not convinced people really want cars like that -- just some cutting-edge greenies, and they aren't representative of the population as a whole.

1. That's the future. Period. What Nissan does in Japan. But you need to be able to manufacture like they do. And all the japanese car makers. Robotization to a huge %, JIT, kanban and stuff.

2. He meant REAL hybrids. Not just ones that save you 10-15% of your fuel. FULL HYBRIDS. .or no, since this is wrongly spelled. . Entirely new engines, Full Electric. . since power sockets are everywhere. .and later hydrogen. .since there are only 4 hydrogen stations in the world. 1 in Calif. and 3(three) in Germany.

BMW already has a fully functional, efficient, electric engine that could go into production anytime. .But they keep it under wraps. . till there is a significant demand on the market for it. . Is it now the time?. .Forget the low price of gas. .it will go up again, and raising forever till total depletion.

[Suzie's Dad]

Originally Posted by akraptor

He meant REAL hybrids. Not just ones that save you 10-15% of your fuel. FULL HYBRIDS. .or no, since this is wrongly spelled. . Entirely new engines, Full Electric. . since power sockets are everywhere. .and later hydrogen. .since there are only 4 hydrogen stations in the world. 1 in Calif. and 3(three) in Germany.

BMW already has a fully functional, efficient, electric engine that could go into production anytime. .But they keep it under wraps. . till there is a significant demand on the market for it. . Is it now the time?. .Forget the low price of gas. .it will go up again, and raising forever till total depletion.

Electric vehicles pose huge problems of storing the energy. Battery technology simply isn't anywhere near where it will have to be for electric cars to become truly viable for anything other than in-town use. I'm guessing you are looking at 40 to 50 years before they do.

Anyway, electric cars don't reduce emissions, they merely move them somewhere else. Most electrical generation in the world is still done by burning stuff, so we would still be pumping all sorts of nasties into the air even if every vehicle on the planet were electric. Nuclear generation is cleaner but uses a lot of increasingly scarcer water and also poses a problem disposing of the nuclear waste. Hydro generation floods massive land areas and causes irreversible changes to vast ecosystems. Hydrogen power isn't realistic as it will be years before anybody figures out how to make the stuff cheaply, distribute it to filling stations economically, and store it safely in the vehicle.

Every reputable study of oil reserves (ie: those that do not start out trying to justify a prearranged conclusion) indicates that we have over 100 years of fuel still left in the ground. That is plenty of time to migrate toward using the stuff solely for transportation -- in other words, use natural gas to heat houses and use electricity to power stationary things, reserving gasoline and diesel for things that move around: cars, planes, trucks, ships, etc.

My money is on gasoline-powered cars as the "vehicle of the future" for at least the next 50 years. There is still a lot of room for engineers to squeeze more efficiency out of the internal combustion engine. Only when gasoline/diesel becomes truly scarce will the price rise forever, and only then will real progress be made to alternative energy sources.

[JOHNBMWM5]

BMW have just bought out the new 7 series 30D SE, I test drove one today and it was averaging 42MPG I was not nursing it either, I liked it. So big car that had some GO and 40+ MPG, that cant be bad.