In recent months, a new outbreak of the new crown epidemic has swept across Southeast Asia, resulting in an intensification of global semiconductor shortages, severe market sales of many car companies, insufficient terminal inventory and delayed deliveries. Some analysts believe that the chip shortage will lead to a reduction of more than 20% in global automobile production this year, and China, as the world's largest automobile producer, can imagine the impact of chip shortage.
However, in the wave of production cuts and shutdowns, there are still some bright spots that show the vitality of China's auto market. As one of the Volkswagen Group's joint ventures in China, FAW-Volkswagen has sold more than 1.4 million units (including Audi imports) from January to September this year, of which the total sales volume in September reached 108,000 units. In a challenging and unstable environment, FAW-Volkswagen has shown strong sales tenacity.
As a huge vehicle company, FAW-Volkswagen does not seem to be in turmoil due to the external situation, but dares to turn crisis into opportunity. While adhering to the Quality of The german system, FAW-Volkswagen has continuously optimized the layout of the industrial chain, promoted product upgrading and lean management for digital transformation, and not forgotten to actively practice social responsibility, and continued to consolidate the achievements of the system development in the past 30 years with a series of effective measures, boosting the confidence of the market and the industry.
The "haze" in the depths must also be lifted to see the sun
Even at the beginning of the epidemic, no one would have thought that a small car chip could make the world auto market constrained. As the world's largest automobile market, China's impact on "lack of core" will be more intense, and the impact on domestic automobile companies will be greater.
In fact, the "core shortage" of the automobile market is not due to the epidemic alone, but the result of a series of events and market reactions. In the early stage, due to the overcapacity of vehicle-grade chips caused by the epidemic, the demand for consumer-grade chips soared, and chip raw materials shifted to consumer-grade chip production. After the domestic epidemic situation improved, car sales picked up, and the demand for vehicle-grade chips began to soar.
From the middle of 2020, the outbreak of the epidemic abroad, a number of chip companies stopped production; the lack of core crisis began to appear, but the impact of lack of core has not been significantly exposed. By the beginning of 2021, the unexpected outbreak of natural disasters such as the Texas Blizzard in the United States and the Renesas fire in Japan led to the reduction or suspension of production by many chip manufacturers, which began to aggravate the "lack of core" situation in the automotive industry.
With the local epidemic in Malaysia since July, many semiconductor factories in the world's most important export country of automotive grade chips have stopped production, affecting the production of high-volume ESP chips. The outbreak of the epidemic in Malaysia has directly led to a large number of car companies announcing that there are "no cars to sell", delaying the delivery of popular models for a long time or even stopping production, and the market situation is extremely grim. As the car company with the highest sales volume of passenger cars in China, the pressure on the shoulders of FAW-Volkswagen is self-evident.
FAW-Volkswagen, which produces and sells huge sales every year, in order to ensure the stability of output and product quality, mostly chooses large global parts suppliers such as Bosch and Continental to supply. However, these two core giants are trapped by the lack of production capacity of upstream manufacturers and have to extend the delivery cycle, which directly affects the terminal supply of FAW-Volkswagen.
Even if it is "hazy" in the depths, it is necessary to maintain concentration and calm response. In the eyes of FAW-Volkswagen, under the crisis, there is just time to solve some other potential problems. In an uncontrollable situation, grasp the controllable links, so as to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.
If the external environment of "lack of core" is uncontrollable, then cultivating itself, improving product strength and user experience is controllable. At present, FAW-Volkswagen is using digital empowerment and other means to deepen the foundation, provide high-value products, and improve the user experience, so as to find new development opportunities in the crisis.
Digital iteration from product to organization
Digitalization is constantly running through every aspect of FAW-Volkswagen from management to production. Unlike the new forces born with Internet thinking, traditional car companies such as FAW-Volkswagen are still a learner and catch-up in digitalization, but they are more active and pragmatic in exploration and innovation, and have the foresight and action of industry leaders.
In the face of the complex external situation, the origin of all FAW-Volkswagen's work is user-centric. It is precisely by adhering to this principle that FAW-Volkswagen has clearly defined its adherence to Ashkenazi quality in the face of difficulties, and has also clarified that it is driven by digitalization, build a lean management system, gain insight into user needs, and provide high-value products, the most typical of which is to practice the "price value strategy".
The so-called price value strategy is to enrich product equipment and enhance product value by increasing the high demand and high value equipment of users according to the rhythm of product life cycle.
In the past, the high-end configuration of FAW-Volkswagen products was mainly equipped on high-end models and even flagship models, and the configuration of low-end and medium-end models was relatively simple. As users become more and more interested in intelligence, comfort and intelligent technology, FAW-Volkswagen has greatly increased the equipment of all models, low- and medium-sized models and main sales models through the value price strategy to improve product cost performance.
Up to now, the series of new products listed so far last year have implemented the price value strategy, including Lanjing, cc family, golf family, Sagitar 2021 upgraded version, etc., which has comprehensively enhanced the sense of product value.
In addition, after practicing the price value strategy, the retention rate of used cars of FAW-Volkswagen products has also been further improved. It is estimated that the value retention rate of normal new cars for three years can reach 7.8-8% discount, which is of great product value.
In terms of innovation and change in the management system, FAW-Volkswagen has carried out strategic adjustment and lean management driven by digitalization, and has achieved excellent results in enterprise operation, marketing field and supplier management.
In terms of enterprise operation, the delivery cycle of brand orders has been shortened, and the attributes of product customization have been continuously improved; in the field of marketing, the official app has achieved 14 million user registration, 2 million monthly active users, 200,000 in-store customer flow, 20,000 transaction volume, and the contact coverage has increased from 80% to 100%.
In the field of dealer ecology, the brand exhibition hall has greatly enriched the brand and dealer image through comprehensive digital upgrading and diversified sales channel development. Through the construction of the EP/mep factory-store integration ecological platform, the degree of online processing, business intelligence, dealer customer acquisition ability and sales management efficiency of FAW-Volkswagen offline business have been improved to varying degrees.
In the eyes of consumers, these are constantly improving their experience throughout the life cycle of the car from purchase to delivery. According to reports, FAW-Volkswagen is implementing personalized customization on all the cars in the five bases, and users can place orders and make personalized customizations through the form of otd, so that priority scheduling, priority distribution, priority delivery, and finally complete delivery at the store end.
While giving products more high added value and rich assembly, so that users can enjoy convenient car booking and car pick-up services, FAW-Volkswagen has also formulated richer car purchase policies and more flexible financial services for users, and the increasingly lean turnover rate has also reduced the delivery cycle of users from 50 days to 35 days.
In order to create a more attractive user service ecology, FAW-Volkswagen has launched a 3m ecological layout, focusing on breakthroughs in three major areas: endurance anxiety for new energy vehicle users, more convenient and innovative shared travel, and more intelligent Vehicle Networking development and operation services to solve users' consumption pain points in the future travel ecology.
Continuous practice of corporate social responsibility
Even if the entire industry is not spared in the wave of "lack of core", FAW-Volkswagen does not forget to practice corporate social responsibility, which not only shows the responsibility of adhering to the original intention, but also the concrete embodiment of all customer-centric concepts.
Affected by the epidemic situation abroad, the domestic epidemic situation has shown a multi-point sporadic situation this year. In order to actively support the prevention and control of the epidemic, FAW-Volkswagen donated 1 million yuan to Gongzhuling City in Jilin Province and Foshan City in Guangdong Province on February 10 and July 1 respectively for local epidemic prevention and control and the improvement of people's lives.
On July 22, heavy rain and flood disaster broke out in Henan, FAW-Volkswagen and its three major brands of Volkswagen, Audi and Jetta donated 25 million yuan to help Henan. Among them, 10 million yuan of cash was used to support flood prevention and disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction in Henan Province, and 15 million yuan was set up to set up a special fund to provide emergency services such as rescue and maintenance of damaged vehicles for users of faw-Volkswagen three major brands in Henan Province.
In the face of the severe disaster relief situation, FAW-Volkswagen once again sounded the rallying call on July 27, organized 89 employees from five major bases across the country to set up a maintenance commando team to support Henan dealers within 24 hours, and set off from five places to henan dealerships in the disaster-stricken cities, helping local dealers repair more than 3,000 user vehicles in the past 20 days.
2021 is the year of FAW-Volkswagen's "enlightenment", but this year is also full of thorns and challenges. As a giant industry leader, FAW-Volkswagen is good at finding new opportunities and new breakthroughs in challenges, and while fully promoting the digital transformation of enterprises, it continues to provide users with more and better products and services with a younger image, and has embarked on a unique way to break the development. (End)