Production on demand

From: Elaine Hunt (ehunt@ces.clemson.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 29 1999 - 20:31:29 EEST


Just reading where Ford and Microsoft have announced a join effort aimed at
allowing customers to research, spec, and order a car on line. The new
system will allow the customer to by-pass the car lots where it is mostly
take what we have or wait, at least until car dealers learn new methods of
doing business. The aim of the process is to allow the customer to get
their choice of vehicle. Also GM, BMW and others are working on similar
systems for near term release. "Toyota has their system down to where they
can get an order in on Monday and the car out the door on Friday."
Interesting.....concept.

Does this mean automakers will only produce cars to order and will their
production numbers drop? How will production lines manage fluctuations?

Does each customer have to learn more about "automotive" terminology and
under the hood type of happenings?

Will the customer be allowed to see a complaint page or will auto-ml become
the hot news group of the year?

Does this really mean I can order my idea of an automobile and it will
still run?

Elaine
*******************************************************************
Opinions, suggestions, and other controversial matter VOID where prohibited.
******************************************************************
Elaine T. Hunt, Director
Clemson University Laboratory to Advance Industrial Prototyping
206 Fluor Daniel Bldg. Clemson, SC 29643-0925
864-656-0321 (voice) 864-656-4435 (fax)
elaine.hunt@ces.clemson.edu
http://rafiki.vr.clemson.edu/credo/persall/persall.html

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:52:53 EEST