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All features articles – Page 22
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FeatureOnline vehicle sales: ACES high as dealers face a new game
Once upon a time, interaction between carmakers and their customers happened in one place: the dealership. Dealer showrooms were where customers learned about products, chose a car and parted with their cash. Once a customer took possession of the vehicle, he was likely to return to the dealer for service ...
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FeatureBLG and Fenix commit to expansion of services at Bronka
German logistics provider BLG Logistics and LLC Fenix, the owner and operator of the Russian port of Bronka, have signed an official letter of intent for joint future development of finished vehicle handling at the port.BLG Logistics has been working with Fenix for six months at the port already, following ...
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FeatureBrazil: Exports are chasing away the clouds
Brazilian vehicle sales, which have fallen every year since 2013, continue to be hampered by a deep recession, a stubborn, double-digit unemployment rate, increasingly tight credit and haemorrhaging consumer confidence. Seemingly unending political crises have also hit the country. So, to combat the stalling economy and venal political climate, carmakers, ...
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FeatureOutbound deliveries: Blocking in the truth
Will bitcoin prove to be one of the most valuable innovations in changing the finished vehicle supply chain? If so, it is not because carmakers and logistics providers are moving their contracts from dollars, euros or yuan to the virtual currency (although given its recent escalation in value, some may ...
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FeatureShift in powertrains drives strong growth in battery production
Production of lithium-ion batteries, like these ones at Nissan's Smyrna Vehicle Assembly Plant, looks set to soarAccelerating growth in electric and hybrid vehicle production is opening up a range of new supply chains across all areas of the automotive industry – not least in battery cell production.With vehicle manufacturers ...
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FeatureMexican ports report boom in vehicle traffic
Mexico's ports saw a 42% increase in finished vehicle traffic in the first five months of this year, figures from the country's Transport & Communications Ministry (SCT) have shown.During the period, total finished vehicle throughput reached 667,881 units, compared to just 470,350 units in January-May 2016.Ports in the Gulf of ...
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FeatureDifferent digital paces
The headline above might well have read ‘industry and logistics 4.0’, ‘the industrial internet of things’, ‘factories of the future’, ‘smart supply chains’ or ‘manufacturing 2025’.Or we might have turned to one of a growing number of acronyms used to outline the car industry’s future, like Mercedes-Benz Car’s CASE or ...
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FeatureSmart packaging: The quest for greater precision
Packaging is one area in the automotive supply chain in which greater connectivity and ‘internet of things’ (IoT) devices have the potential to make significant improvements. Many of the chronic issues that accompany the management and flow of equipment, including missing or incorrect containers, damage to parts, as well as ...
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FeatureProject cargo: Achieving mission impossible
Project cargo logistics is a term that covers a wide range of activities, from the movement of unusually large or heavy loads to the management of time-critical ones. In basic terms, it can be defined as the coordination, planning and management of particularly challenging logistics projects.In the automotive sector, examples ...
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FeatureMiddle East and Africa: Ford opens up the highways
An army marches on its stomach, Napoleon is reputed to have said, in perhaps one of history’s earliest endorsements of the wisdom of sound logistics infrastructure. These days, as those in the automotive industry know, good logistics in the marketplace is often the key to winning business and meeting the ...
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FeatureSuzuki gets its delivery priorities in order
A prolonged period of strong sales growth in the UK means Suzuki now imports more than double the number of vehicles it did five years ago into the country. This expansion has put pressure on the company’s finished vehicle supply chain. It has also come at a time when customer ...
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FeatureIndian regulations: A rainbow of solutions
The Indian vehicle logistics market is in the midst of major change and disruption, much of it in the name of modernisation and improvement. New dimension and safety requirements for car carriers came into force in April, with carmakers and logistics providers scrambling to make their fleets compliant and secure ...
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FeatureRussia summit: Dealing with the reality of a slow recovery
Confidence is gradually returning to the Russian automotive market with sales and production showing definite signs of life after a tough period of retrenching and divestment. Sanctions remain but many at this year’s Automotive Logistics Russia conference in Moscow felt that this was the time to invest in the market ...
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FeatureNorth American ports: Slowdown after growth tests capacity to cope
While seven years of consecutive sales growth in the North American automotive industry have put vehicle handling ports to the test in terms of throughput, many of them are now being tested further by the slowdown in sales in the US, with inventory build-ups in some ports, and slower throughput.Meanwhile, ...
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FeaturePrivate equity group EQT buys into terminal at Port of LA
EQT Partners, the Swedish private equity group, has acquired a 90% interest in the Global Gateway South (GGS) terminal at the Port of Los Angeles for $817m.The investment is being made by the EQT Infrastructure III fund which completed a €4 billion ($4.5 billion) fundraising in February.The seller, CMA CGM, ...
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FeatureBMW Group: Thinking big about outbound
Alongside pictures of her family, Anita Pieper’s office is full of visual charts and signposts: value-stream maps, PDA circles for scheduling and a 3PS board outlining various projects and targets her teams are working on, from quality statistics to network studies or a plant launch years ahead.In the middle of ...
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FeatureVolvo Cars China: A system built for growth
[sta_anchor id="1"]Few carmakers have been moving as quickly as Volvo Cars to develop and expand their industrial footprint in China. In less than five years, the carmaker has launched two assembly plants and an engine factory, while ramping up production and more than doubling sales in the country. It has ...
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FeatureVolkswagen OTC: Sea king of the Kassel
[sta_anchor id="1"]In many ways, the heart of Volkswagen Group After Sales – the OEM’s service parts and aftermarket division – is its massive Original Teile (Parts) Centre (OTC) in Baunatal, near Kassel, central Germany. This impressive storage and shipping centre serves destinations across the world, including European dealerships as well ...
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FeatureVolkswagen Group Logistics: Come together, right now
All carmakers are [sta_anchor id=”1”]grappling with how to plan and respond to the technological, social and economic changes that are expected to affect their products and businesses. Manufacturers must simultaneously manage rising demand for both traditional and alternative fuels, while exploring new models for mobility that might, in future, change ...
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FeatureRussia: Ready for a recovery?
Vehicle sales in Russia have shown modest rises in recent months, raising hopes that this year will finally return to growth and kick off a longer-term recovery. Following several months of increases, sales of new light vehicles in the first five months of the year had risen by 5.1% compared ...