Auto Industry to Popularize E-commerceE-commerce will be popularized first in China's auto industrial sector, said Professor Zhang Zhiwen with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) at the 2001 China Auto Summit called on April 22.Zhang gave his view that traditional management conception and model could hardly cope with the situation of tense international competition and that economic globalization is to be accelerated after China's entry into the WTO. The Chinese enterprises will be enabled by e-commerce to upgrade their supply chain, achieve the least storage, speed up the turnover of capital, work for improved sale and post-sale service, optimize management of production and management over finance, hence cut costs and increased competitive force by products. He said that contrary to many IT industrial entrepreneurs showing great zeal for e-commerce to which traditional enterprises have attached not much importance. Actually, e-commerce means conducting business via electronics in helping enterprises secure modernization. However, before e-commerce is introduced to Chinese enterprises, they should first of all have good exercise of Enterprise Resource Planning, maintain good operations of finance, supply chain, customer relationship management, post-sale service, organization management of production, etc. He believes that production by order which is very popular in the world now will see a speedy development in China's industry, esp. its auto industry, in the coming three or five years. Presently we often feel that what we need is a car with which we are not satisfied for its color, collocation, or decoration up to manufacturers' will instead of customers' demand. If buyers can send their requirement to the manufacturers through computer and pay a certain amount of margin money, the enterprises, then, can satisfy the consumers to the greatest degree and avoid overstocking of products at the same time. At present, it takes a well-run auto enterprise at least six days to sell a car. Since overstocking costs high, the developed countries have a "three-day" stock plan, which means three days will be needed only when production by order is developed. To achieve this goal, enterprises need to alter their mode of manufacturing and organization to change their manufacture concept and management to a recombination of production. He also noted that purchase of materials so far is still done by man in most cases and this not only takes time but also raises the cost as it might result in iniquity. Contrarily, e-commerce will provide easy access of communication between consumers and entrepreneurs, lower costs and raise their international competitiveness of products. He stressed that during the 10th Five-year Plan, MOST will bring an active boost to e-commerce, combining traditional industry with the process of informationization and e-commerce widely developed in auto industry. By PD Online Staff Deng Gang |
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