BMW’s Internationalisation Strategy

BMWs Internationalisation Strategy â€Å"Worldwide movement toward economic, financial, trade, and communications integration. Globalization implies opening out beyond local and nationalistic perspectives to a broader outlook of an interconnected and inter-dependent world with free transfer of capital, goods, and services across national frontiers.† Globalization is a process of interface and merger amongst the people, companies, and governments of different states, a process encouraged by international trade and investment and supported by technology. This process has effects on the environment, culture, political structures, economic progress and prosperity. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW), English: Bavarian Motor Works is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company which was founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the MINI brand, and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars also is under the management of BMW AG. BMW manufactures motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands. BMW is known for its performance and luxury vehicles. BMW cars are being assembled in South Africa since 1968, when Praetor Monteerders’ factory was opened in Rosslyn, near Pretoria. To begin with BMW bought shares in the company, before fully buying it out in 1975. As a result the company was named BMW South Africa; this was the first fully owned subsidiary of BMW AG which was established outside Germany. Despite U.S. manufacturers, such as Ford and GM divesting from the country in the 1980s, BMW continued to maintain full ownership of its operations in South Africa. Subsequent to the fall of apartheid in 1994 and the import duties being reduced, BMW South Africa halted manufacturing of the 5-Series and 7-Series. This was done in order to focus on manufacturing of the 3-Series which was to be exported. BMW South Africa’s cars were now being exported to right hand drive countries which included Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, etc.; this also included the African Saha ra. Since 1997 BMW South Africa had started producing vehicles in left hand drive which were to be exported to Taiwan, the United States, etc. Austria In 1978, BMW took a decision to begin a joint venture with the Austrian company Steyr-Daimler-Puch to design, produce and sell diesel engines. When this joint venture ended in 1982, BMW took over the plant in the Austrian city of Steyr under its own group. Over time the Austrian factory had become the back bone for engine production and R&D. United States of America BMWs Spartanburg plant in South Carolina, USA commenced operation and began producing BMW automobiles for the world market in 1994. A huge success of these automobiles soon led to extensive structural enlargements at the Spartanburg plant. Its capacity was enlarged by adding additional shifts, introducing flexible working-hour models and hiring new employees. Today, the Spartanburg plant is open six days a week, with circa 110 hours a week of production. United Kingdom The BMW Group brought its flagship brand MINI into the European market in 2000. The first models to be introduced were the MINI One and MINI Cooper. In 2002, the sporty MINI Cooper S was launched, as did the MINI One D with diesel engine in 2003. In 2004, the MINI convertible was launched. The origin of the MINI is the Oxford plant in the United Kingdom. It is totally incorporated into the BMW Group production network. The plant and Mini brand were acquired in 1994 with purchase of the Rover Group.

Technology Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Technology Management - Essay Example I have discussed various strategies and techniques that can be used to improve the management of technology in a business organization and their impact. Each strategy is given a specific time which if accurately followed will produce some projected results. Technology Management The role of technology in the production industry can never be overlooked. It is clear that the more the use of advanced technology in the industry the better the results. However, the use of technology must be managed appropriately to ensure that it has been used efficiently and that the technology meets the expected results. Hence it is good for a business organization that incorporates technology in production to consider proper management of technology to increase profits and avoid losses. There are several issues of concern that are practices of poor technology management. One of them is having a weak internal technical support (Treat, 2011). Often the technical support is given to the computer experts w ho perform the work in addition to their regular job responsibilities. This causes the expert not to give their full attention to this work and this leads to poor performance. Another aspect is the keeping of older technology for too long. Old methods of technology in production need a lot of repair and fail often. This leads to a high business downtime, where the systems of production are rarely available (Bidgoli, 2010). This means that production time is wasted during repair hence reducing production. Older technology also work slowly and inefficiently hence does less work compared to use of up to date technology. Hence we can conclude that keeping older technology for too long is a poor practice that heavily costs productions. One more issue concerning poor technology management is lack of proper training to the employees (Tesar et al. 2004). Proper understanding of a computer system to the employee will enable them to easily perform the expected operations. When new technology or application is introduced into the organization, proper training of the users is essential for increased productivity. Another very crucial aspect of management of technology is the lack keeping the current software licenses (Harrison & Samson, 2002). If a business organization fails to keep their software licenses current, they greatly miss out on critical software updates. This also hinders access to technical support that would expose the users to new ideas and features and this holds back people from being as productive as possible. There are several strategies and techniques that can be used to improve technology management. One of it is to keep the users well trained on all the operations of technology. Training should not be done only when the user in been introduced to the technology, but should be frequently done so as to perfect the users knowledge and expertise on the use of technology. Another very effective technique is to put in place a strong internal technical sup port team. This team should be completely dedicated to technical operations support and research and should not have any other responsibilities. This empowers the team to concentrate on the use of technology in the most efficient way to increase production. Use of a good data backup is critical in good technology management. This technique ensures regular data backup to all business related information. Good policies and tools to manage backup of information regularly should be established. This ensures that even if the