"Renqi" epidemic prevention and control upgrade, how to "self-help" car companies?

Author: Song Jiating

The three-year-long COVID-19 pandemic continues. At the end of March, the epidemic in Shanghai escalated, and the "Mandarin Duck Pot" zoning and control policies in Pudong and Puxi once again cast a shadow on the slowly recovering automobile manufacturing industry.

Including Tesla, SAIC-GM, SAIC Volkswagen and other car companies announced the temporary suspension of production in this round of epidemic counterattack caused by the closure.

Tesla's Shanghai factory has been out of production for two days in mid-March, and according to public reports, the factory lost 2,000 vehicles a day, with a cumulative loss of more than 10,000 vehicles in six days.

Shanghai is not an isolated case. Since the beginning of this year, there have been precedents for two major automobile towns in Tianjin and Changchun to press the pause button due to the epidemic.

The epidemic in Tianjin at the beginning of the year caused FAW Toyota's three plants to stop production for several days, and the annual production capacity of these three plants was about 470,000 units, and the direct loss was that FAW Toyota's new car sales in January fell by 20% year-on-year. Also affected are the Volkswagen Automatic Transmission (Tianjin) plant and the FAW-Volkswagen Tianjin plant.

There are more depots in Changchun. In early March, FAW Group announced that its five major automakers, including Hongqi, Besturn, Jiefang, and FAW-Volkswagen, announced an emergency suspension plan. The initial shutdown will be from March 13 to March 16, and the four-day shutdown is expected to result in a loss of about 50,000 units.

Changchun is expected to resume work and production around the beginning and middle of April, but the specific day still needs to wait for official notice. Shenyang was also affected, and on March 22, BMW Brilliance's Shenyang Dadong plant also announced a temporary shutdown plan.

The sealing and suspension of production caused by the spread of the epidemic in many places has made the pressure on car companies increasingly heavy. Production was static, consumption was suspended, and the large-scale sales volume of various manufacturers fell significantly. According to the forecast of the Association of Passenger Vehicles, retail sales of narrow passenger cars in March were 1.58 million units, down 10% year-on-year.

At present, it can be described as the "darkest moment" of the automotive industry. Before there is no further plan for epidemic prevention and control, how should car companies save themselves?

FAW-Volkswagen's three major brands "fight the epidemic" have a way

After the outbreak of the epidemic in Changchun, FAW-Volkswagen formulated a hierarchical control strategy, clarified the profit improvement path, and made every effort to ensure that the profit target was achieved. Take FAW-Volkswagen's three brands of Audi, ID., and Jetta as an example, let's take a look at the FAW-Volkswagen anti-epidemic battle.

After the introduction of personnel flow control measures one after another, Audi Sales Division adopted a home office model, and in the first week, through the online conference channel, opened a comprehensive online discussion of core management, taking user operation and digital intelligence transformation and upgrading as the starting point to form a "141" digital intelligence mechanism and system guarantee.

Among them, the home office solution jointly developed by the Audi brand epidemic response team and MS has achieved remarkable results, with the connection rate increasing from 7% to 77%, and the connection rate of complaints and rescue reaching more than 85%, realizing a new situation in which epidemic prevention work and business are carried out in an orderly manner under the epidemic.

At present, Audi has shared this experience with brands such as Volkswagen, Jetta and Mojie, and the home office equipment of each brand is also being configured and launched.

The FAW-Volkswagen ID. Operation Center has launched three core initiatives to achieve strict management of epidemic prevention work.

The first is to establish a "1+1+5+5" epidemic prevention and control organizational structure, and senior managers and second-level managers of various departments will deepen the epidemic prevention and control management work to achieve grid monitoring and ensure the implementation of the latest epidemic prevention measures.

The second is to establish a "daily meeting" notification mechanism to check and remind the relevant information and work of epidemic prevention and control every day to ensure that all employees are 100% aware of and implement the latest prevention and control requirements.

The third is to mobilize all employees to actively learn the relevant knowledge of epidemic prevention and control, including precautions for epidemic prevention and control and the handbook that should be known for the prevention and control of the epidemic in the group and the company, etc., to ensure that all employees grasp the requirements and self-protection methods of epidemic prevention and home work.

In addition to strengthening internal epidemic prevention, the ID. operation center on the market side focuses on user-centered and pays full attention to the "five degrees" of users, so as to solve user problems quickly and efficiently.

For example, the SALES Strategy Department of the ID. Operation Center and the major regions have established a rapid response mechanism for customer complaints to ensure that the user's problems can be responded to and solved in the first time; in addition, the ID. operation center has also arranged department personnel to join the geniuses and user groups in various regions to answer charging questions online to comprehensively guarantee the user's charging service.

It is understood that during the epidemic period, the ID. operation center has linked multiple departments to overcome online office difficulties, handle 234 customer adjustment orders, and fully guarantee user satisfaction.

Compared with Audi and ID., the sudden outbreak of the epidemic has affected the dealers of the Jetta brand nationwide to varying degrees. In this regard, Jetta people rose to the challenge, and the personnel of the Changchun Headquarters of the Regional Management Department communicated the sales status and support with the regional managers through Tencent meetings every day, and coordinated with various departments of the Headquarters to discuss the sales promotion strategy of dealers under the epidemic to ensure the completion of the Sales Target in March.

Each business unit of the sales planning department uses the online platform to work overtime and implement policies to maximize the protection of sales rhythm and project progress, grasp the STD increment on the one hand, and grasp the new product live order meeting on the other hand, comprehensive overall planning, scientific planning, and boost dealer sales confidence.

The sales strategy group quickly formulated a special policy assessment mechanism for March, and at the same time, based on the judgment of the epidemic situation in April and internal and external opportunities, actively planned the promotion policy for the second quarter to seize the market opportunity after the recovery of the epidemic. Under the premise of meeting the company's management requirements and ensuring the safety of employees, the order group sent special personnel to the company to issue invoices and quickly launched the DingTalk OA approval process, which greatly improved the efficiency of special needs approval.

Under the efficient linkage of Changchun and Chengdu, the Jetta brand has achieved efficient operation of the home office security sales system, and the coverage market share has continued to increase, with the cumulative coverage share reaching 6.6% in the first three weeks of March, an increase of 1.5% year-on-year, and the coverage market ranking entered the Top 4 for the first time.

Obviously, after the epidemic entered the third year, FAW-Volkswagen has been able to find its own online management mechanism in continuous exploration and continuously reduce the impact of the shutdown.

Accurate epidemic prevention must not be "one letter"

For now, the mutating virus has made the epidemic impossible to extinguish for a short time, but the economic losses, including the automobile industry, are visible to the naked eye.

According to the preliminary estimates of the Association, the sales loss caused by the impact of the epidemic in the automobile market in March was about 200,000 vehicles.

Faw-Volkswagen, for example, the planned four-day shutdown will result in a loss of about 48,000 units at the FAW-Volkswagen Changchun plant, but if it is still unable to resume normal plant operations in April, its losses will far exceed expectations.

How to minimize the losses caused by epidemic prevention and control, try to avoid falling behind and maintain competitiveness under the fiercely competitive market situation, has become the biggest problem for car companies in the current epidemic control area.

It is worth noting that in mid-March, Shenzhen was also affected by the epidemic control, and BYD responded that the shenzhen epidemic had some impact on the production of its Shenzhen factory, but it was not large.

The reason is that, according to the response of the comprehensive team of the office of the Shenzhen Municipal Epidemic Prevention and Control Command, during the 7-day strict control of the epidemic in this round, the enterprises in the closed management industrial park have the opportunity to carry out normal production and operation, but these enterprises need to meet the needs of employees living, working and transportation in the park, and complete the closed management needs of "two points and one line".

This shows that BYD can ensure that employees living in the park can achieve normal production work under the condition of closure. BYD's Shenzhen plant mainly produces BYD Han and BYD Tang, with a monthly production capacity of between 25,000 and 30,000 units.

It has also been reported that SAIC Volkswagen is trying to maintain the plant without stopping production in a closed manner. However, the SAIC Volkswagen plant in Anting suspended production from April 1 to 5.

At present, the industry's public statement is cautious optimism. On the one hand, with a series of larger tax and fee reductions and policies to help enterprises solve difficulties, it will help car companies to bail out; on the other hand, if the epidemic is effectively controlled in the second quarter, the consumer demand at the market end is expected to be released in the second half of the year.

The key problem is that even if the prevention and control is upgraded, the automobile enterprises must not be banned and sealed, and the local government authorities must actively explore new methods and new channels under the premise of epidemic prevention and safety, and open the window for enterprises to breathe.