Truck Equipment

Perhaps it’s with the bankruptcy of Chrysler LLC that automotive and truck industries have been revamping their policies to invest in and produce more efficient and cost-effective means of transportation. More specifically, by improving the infrastructure and reducing the environmental impact of trucks, Volvo Trucks North America is trying to open new ways of increasing highway freight transport productivity. A means of progressing towards this goal would be investing in the use of more productive trucks, claims Scott Kress, Volvo’s senior vice president of marketing and sales. However challenges of safely delivering more freight and being more efficient to support current and future demands remains. While demands of freight transportation has increased with the population and economic growth over the decades, infrastructure investment for highway and bridge system for freight deliver has remained unchanged, resulting in significant freight bottlenecks that cost the US economy tens of billions of dollars per year, says Kress.

Idealistically, if efficient truck production was achieved, productive trucks would consume less fuel, reduce green house gas emissions, and depend less on foreign fuels. With safe performance as Volvo’s core value and foundation of the company, Kress claims that Volvo’s Trucks’ initiative to promote the generation of leaner and safer trucks on the highway is paramount to their success as a leading company of the truck industry. However, it’s not just the production of more efficient trucks a strategy of improving truck transportation that would transform the industry – there is also factors of road infrastructure would aide in the global impact.

So what does this show us? Keeping up to date with the infrastructure could save our economy billions of dollars – an investment surely a worthy of pursuit with this revolution of energy efficiency. Public policy must change to reduce such bottlenecks that are not only caused by the vehicles on the road, but the road congestion the result from poor infrastructure. Nonetheless, with Volvo Trucks North America initiating change, perhaps other companies of this industry can see the benefits in similar investments and start converting their companies to providing more productive trucks on the road.

Bottlenecks and extra expense can be avoided and efficiency can be attained with better management. Does your company face a similar situation?  Feel free to discuss with me to further aid your company in finding a solution to become more efficient.

The bankruptcy of Chrysler LLC brings about fear among the automakers and analysts of the automotive industry. Fear of the domino affect – the aftershock of the shutdown of a plant impacting other automakers such as Ford Motor as well as non-American supplies like Toyota could potentially go under. It was just a few days ago when Chrysler decided to shut down its plants to complete its bankruptcy reorganization and halting production for approximately two months due to have excessive inventory on vehicles. Specialists have claimed that there will be widespread effects across the industry due to this shutdown could halt operations and assembly lines of other automakers.
However, although auto sales have fallen and despite the $5.3 billion that Chrysler owes for work already shipped to the automaker, there seems to be improvement forecasted. Automakers say that there seems to be stabilization as the automotive industry reaches closer to recovery. Mike DiGiovanni, head of sales analysis for General Motors, claims that United States vehicle sales are waiting to ascend, as the industry has reached its summit. Modest changes and rise are expected and for once, Ford Motor Company outsells Toyota, which reached “worse-than-expected” sales plummet 41.9% year-over-year in April. Meanwhile automakers like Honda, Nissan, , Pontiac and more have continued to decline, analysts remain optimistic in the future of the automotive industry while it presently remains in turmoil.

As Chrysler files for bankruptcy, Italian automaker, Fiat, will enter in and taking over the Chrysler industry. Many consumers are now hesitant to purchase Chrysler cars or trucks due to the attachment of the “bankrupt” branding that devalues the Chrysler vehicles. Should you be afraid to purchase these vehicles? Personally, I don’t think so due to the fact that one’s warranty on their Chrysler vehicle remains intact and there will be automotive services for Chrysler cars- though fewer than before. However, changes are currently being made as this industry makes way towards a patch of light that gives a glimmer of hope to the industry for a better future.

The manufacturing industry takes a toll on the brink of collapse as the financial crisis proceeds. Industrial production has fallen from 3.6% to 4.4%, the amount of cars being assembled in America decreased 60% be and machine tool orders were 40% lower than its previous year. However, the countries dependant on manufacturing exports face a larger collapse, such as Germany’s industrial production in the fourth quarter fell by 6.8%; Taiwan’s by 21.7%; Japan’s by 12%. Thousands of factories face foreclosure and industries seek bailout from the government. One especially prominent case would be the stimulus package for the deteriorating auto industry, more specifically, General Motors. Aid would supposedly provide support for the economy and start stimulating cities like Detroit, Stuttgart and Guangzhou, which is heavily based on manufacturing. However, the issue of this economic crisis is not addressed and there have been questions raised in regards to whether providing funds for this industry would be beneficial. Drawbacks include not knowing how government aid would affect the manufacturing industries worldwide and how long their inventories would persist, as well as the problem of the fall in demand for everything. This brings the question of how the government would decide which business and industries should and can be saved, taking account to the size of the business and maximization of benefits in the long run. Therefore, how could governments decide which firms to save?
Resources have stated that keeping a protectionist policy on demand would only deter the long-run growth rate in the United States by confining resources in inefficient firms at home. Hence, it seems to be efficiency is the main problem with the manufacturing industry, and jobs are being endangered as firm after firm of car-makers go corrupt. The car industry makes the argument of the significance of saving the automotive industry because the loss of GM would be extremely detrimental to the North American supply chain. However, there has been a remark in regards to the supply and demand for products and services and that regardless of how much money would be pumped into firms to stimulate product creation, the demand from today’s consumers is the key concern. Also, it has been stated that firms that are highly specialized and efficient would reap the most benefits from state aid – if not, aid would be deemed a waste of investment. Hence, the fiscal stimulus comes with a price tag: renovating the industries to become more efficient in their supply chain would be beneficial not only in the present to stimulate finance to be flowing throughout the global economy, but it would also be helpful for the individual firms themselves in the long run to be running be a cost-effective and resourceful manner.

What do you think about the fiscal stimulus for the manufacturing industry? How do you think these firms can achieve efficiency and gain the government and taxpayers’ confidence in being able to resourcefully utilize the funds gained?

President Barack Obama’s plans on announcing a $17.4 billion aid package for the struggling auto industry in the United States publicly brings notice to the urgency of the situation and dire need save the industry. His encouragement for companies such as General Motors and Chryslter to bring forth drastic change is supported by promises of additional help and funds if the industry begins the process of restructuring the industry and conducting a viable plan to prevent industrial collapse. He mandates, “If they’re not willing to make the changes and the restructurings that are necessary, then I’m not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money.” The $17.4 billion in federal loans are currently keeping General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC afloat as Obama is determined to formulate plans to increase long-term provides through tough concessions with stakeholders.

With the loans, the progress in debt reconstruction and concessions from stakeholders such as the United Auto Wokers union are being severely observed, for aid was said to be revoked if change is not seen under strict conditions. Due to the accumulated debt held by these major companies, means of scarifices such as cuts are made as more efficient and effective means of conducting this industry is encouraged. Although bondholders are reluctant to concede with these cuts in companies’ cash contributions to things like retirement and insurance, the union has agreed to other terms such as work rule changes and reducing total hourly labor costs – relative to those at Japanese automakers with U.S factories.

Furthermore, with oil prices and fuel effiency playing as important factors in the future of this industry, Obama continues to provide aid to preserve this industry and the large number of jobs connected to the companies and suppliers.

What do you think? Will President Obama’s aid package for General Motors and Chrysler provide enough support to have the automotive industry? Will the industry restructuring be enough to bounce back this collapsing industry? What do you think about this aid package amongst the other packages President Obama is providing to bolster the economy?

We can all agree that it is in most, if not every, manufacturing company’s best interest to minimize costs, increase productivity and improve overall performance. With factors such as fluctuating demand in the market that come into play, organizing the most efficient manufacturing process when can be quite challenging and troublesome with the receding economy we have today. Before the advanced tools in technology and software, organization and input were maintained manually; this generally took a long period of time and opened doors to potential errors that could be easily overlooked amidst the bulk of information. Nowadays, with the increase in speed of production planning, there are new methods to quickly and consistently adjust planning preferences and manage schedules in a timely and orderly manner. No longer is it necessary to manually make the adjustments; rather techniques capable of improving the assembling process for manufacturing schedules efficiently. Now, how can manufacturing companies increase efficiency and organization while keeping up with this fast-paced world of constant change?

With the generation of a production planning system, this allows many aspects of a company to produce accurate and reliable schedules while taking account in multiple factors necessary to maintain such as the resources, machine capacities and constraints, order of prioritization with customers and orders, and more. All the while, ensuring the most profitable solutions and minimizing bottlenecks, shortages, and potential problems.

Example
Take for example, the Knapheide Flint Truck Equipment Company. As a heavy equipment manufacturing company serving country-wide, Knapheide Flint builds and delivers state-of-the-art utility trucks, snowplows, dump trucks. For a company building over 5,000 trucks each year with 10-20 jobs at 10 locations running simultaneously, Knapheide Flint’s challenge was that the organization of employee scheduling was based on manual scheduling adjustments and predictions on board where hundreds of jobs were reviewed. Maintaining this manual scheduling process was not only labor intensive, but often times reflected inconsistencies that limited the company’s production capabilities.

In order to fix this problem and maximize the company’s production, a solution was found through the implementation of APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) software for the manufacturers. With the integration of this use- friendly software with a familiar drag-and-drop interface, this manufacturing company was able to display an organized overview of scheduling for its staff. With APS solutions, bottlenecks in companies are eliminated and production is optimized. For example, with the new capability of providing customers realistic estimates of the completion of a project, Knapheide Flint was able to identify where bottlenecks occurred and which department needed more attention or work on. Similarly, the increased flexibility and forecasting capability of the APS system allowed the company to make strategic decisions to improve and proactively prepare for fluctuations in demand.

Efficiency is key to the APS system, for what once required two full time employees now became a program that automatically modified planning preferences. By integrating the APS solution, Knapheide Flint was able to reduce the labor of two full-time employees into a process that took just 15 minutes per day.

With the ability to forecast demand from different parts of the company, integrating APS solutions into a business’s production schedule can provide you and your company advanced decision-making to optimize production and maintaining an organized schedule, essential for a successful business.

Do you have any questions about the APS or interested to learn more? Feel free to leave a message!