Skf Bearings Essay

511 Words3 Pages
Marketing Decision Sheet: SKF Bearings Problem Statement: SKF Bearings has undergone a restructure of its production facilities to a cost effective ‘Japanese model’ with specific bearings assigned to specific manufacturing centers. The company, though, is not able to engage its customers enough to utilize its economies of scale and scope. Proposed Solution by the Company: Restructure the company on lines of its customer base into Bearing industries, Bearing Services and Specialty Bearings. Analysis 1. The company specializes in high quality high end bearings. SFK’s R$D information base has traditionally provided the differentiation in this case. The R$D information base, in turn, is built by its large and varied customer base. Thus the future strategy has to necessarily involve serving all types of customers: a. The aftermarket (industrial and vehicle) customers pay a higher price per bearing but require faster lead times, variance of product, better service. An existing technical/manufacturing knowhow (preferably by having served the respective OEM) provides maximum value to these customer by reducing the time (75%) being invested by them in search of the exact product they reqiore. b. The industrial customers demand both cost efficiency and investment in R$D. The industrial customers, though, provide for large predictive quantities that help standardize production and technical assurance to serve aftermarket industries. 2. SFK’s international presence and large customer base allow it to produce at low cost. 3. The current production (Japanese) model reflects their aspiration of serving all customers at high quality. 4. The company has traditionally been product research intensive with focus on producing high end/ high quality and lately has also been process oriented with focus on orienting production resources to achieve
Open Document