as been the case with Toyota recently when they had to call back a good amount of vehicle and that resulted in huge amount in terms of cost and bad image (Bordenave and Lung,2000).
Being Flexible to Changing Needs
That's difficult but important to stay in modern day business, there has been the time customer needs regarding vehicles were not dynamically changing and companies could work with same models for longer period of time, but now things are more difficult, consumer are more demanding and their need regarding cars are changing more rapidly and new need are more diverse, now in order to stay competitive in business car manufacturers have to be flexible enough to manage and incorporate increasing demand and changing needs in their products. This will increase cost but this is one of the key success factors for new age automotive industry (Freyssenet, Shimizu & Volpato, 2002).
Efficient Production
Today's need is efficient production, this can be achieved by streamlining their production activities in way that costs are low and production standards are not compromised, TQM or JIT can be solution for that and Toyota has been successfully implementing both of management concepts in their production line. Whatever the solution is the base is to get most efficient production in order to stay competitive, yes quality is not to be compromised and standards are to be maintained. Production efficiency alone can serve as competitive advantage in today's world (The Economist, 2005).
Cost Planning
High profit margins not only comes from high sales but also from well planned cost structures, as commented above efficient production along with a good channel of distribution can lower costs. Without being able to control and minimizing cost, modern day auto producers cannot win the game, due to intense competition and increased customer demands, globalization challenges profit margins are squeezing, without having effective cost management system it will hard for any organization to gain profits in these turbulent times(The Economist, 2005).
Organizational Size Management
Above mentioned cost management cannot be achieved unless there is no organizational size management. This is vital and critical to keep an eye on the size of the organization, as mentioned in the case now companies has to lay off plants and their employees in order to control their costs, any organization that is not able better manage their size will be victim of their own size, along with size there needs to have a look on the structure, high hierarchies are not applicable in today's business world, this is the time to empower people and give them decision making power, this saves cost in terms of number of people and management's time, and also provide the competitive edge of better and timely decision making(Buckley, Casson, 1976).
Joint Ventures and Mergers
To better serve the market and to get most out of it, today's need is to win the business with joint ventures and mergers, there are many benefits of such activities, for example mergers brings many brands under one umbrella and provides the positive image about the organization as big company and enhance the confidence, it also helps in better management of brand, since local management is involved in managing local brand they can better handle them as per consumer psychology and help the parent company to get the desired image(Bartlett, and Ghoshal1989). These jo