Harley Davidson’s Customer-centered supply Chain Essay

1. How can Harley Davidson merchandising and gross revenue, force out interact with its buying effect to further strengthen the run chain and better client committal? To further strengthen the tag on chain and remediate customer loyalty. Harley Davidson food marketing and gross sales personnel must(prenominal) interact with its purchasing personnel to commix the supply chain from supplier of raw reals and getting the crossing delivered into the tip over of user at the right meter, address and quality user postulate it.Harley integrated effort must focuses on people, process and engineering to emend supply chain using by enhance quality, stretch cost and improve delivery time to make sure every do of supply chain r individually their objective and satisfy customer collect and wants. People The Supply chain cash advance effort involves participation from each(prenominal) Harley productions such as marketing, sales, supplier, engineers, transporter and other involver with Harley. All of them must corroborate the knowledge about customer take on and wants.Marketing and sales personnel must suck up a advantageously knowledge about customer call for and wants. This is to ensure the best tuition can be trans coifred to purchasing personnel for making purchasing material that can suite customers need and wants. Harley marketing and sales personnel make a community marketing they dont just denounce a motorcycle but in like manner selling an ownership experience. Harley Davidson delivers membership in a community, arranges essay tours and sells a lifestyle for the Harley purchaser, it can be concluded total product far exceeds the motorcycle.All activities ar to make sure the marketing and sales personnel kumpulkan data about the customer need and want, and easily transfer to purchasing personnel to make ripening about the material. Marketing and sales personnel also must make market-based assets, such as fuddled branding, strong customer base and strong partner networks, when product development from the customers info database launches the modernistic product introduction.It will divine service maintain firm performance and greater chance of success, as customers are to a greater extent willing to try a new offer from a strong brand. This supply chain development through enhance quality, reduce cost and improve delivery time can easily be done if the people in the Harley fully participate to achieve it and indirectly improve customer loyalty. Process Harley-Davidson is known for delivering a consistently high school quality product. There are a number of different areas in the process that affect their quality, starting with product form.They work to design quality into the products they develop, and they do this through a concurrent pride methodology, which is very unique(predicate) for both product development and the input that they get on design from marketing and sales people, engineers, manuf acturing people, and suppliers. They involve everyone in the early stages, and everyone effectively designs products in concert to suite customer need and wants and indirectly improves customer loyalty. Technology.Fast info from marketing and sales personnel is important, so Harley use communication technology via web portal to transform customer buying habits through their principal sum and supply chain control for their demand on material. It makes every the material came to factory just in time and safe a green goddess of money. Just in time inventory was driving force of Harley quality-improvement program. As they operate with lower inventories, it becomes essential that both inventories are usable and it all consider to be a good one.Harley-Davidson could non compete on price against the Japanese motorcycle producers, so it had to establish other market values and improve quality. Harley had to change from a federation which dictated what its customers could be in poss ession of to strategies based on direct input from customers. A marketing ism was veritable based on the customers desires, gathered through surveys, interviews and focus groups. For employment Harley image promotes a mystique appearance, individualism, the feeling of riding free, and the pride of owning a legend.Harley customer relations give a free 1-year membership to the Harley Owners Group (HOG), which was developed in 1983 as a program to keep people bustling with their Harley and community advertising campaign. 2. What is the exercise of technology in Harleys supply chain? What additional uses of technology can you identify that might be useful to Harley focus on dealer and ultimate customer? The role of technology in Harley is to cut on communication and administrative time via their department, suppliers, dealers and customers.Harley use Harley-Davidson Suppliers Network (www. hdsn.com), the portal with web base technology to permit all department, suppliers and deale r view purchasing auberge, inventory and material information order in real time. This should make Harley buying system more efficient, reducing time and reducing the amount of inventory in plant in other worth it enhance quality, reduce cost and improve delivery time. From the technology Harley can easily identified which dealer have a problem from their database. The company implemented a program to brook on helping its dealers develop the up-to-date lineage skills they need to sell motorcycles more effectively.The headquarters sponsored training programs that call Harley-Davidson University via this technology. The dealers are considered to be contrast partners and the headquarters plays an active role in developing programs, financing improvements, implementing relief and management consultants. The dealers also invest their own money into these programs which allows them to feel analogous apart of the company. Harley-Davidson treats the dealers not only as partners, but a lso as customers.Harley has developed a very effective marketing strategy, but it is the office of manufacturing to produce high quality and reliable motorcycles. 3. Some of Harleys suppliers also supply key Harley competitors. How can Harley be sure these suppliers will not share private-enterprise(a) information with its competitors? How important is trust surrounded by suppliers and business concern purchasers? Global business environment has become more unstable, supplier negotiations have taken important new role on helping improve corporate competitiveness. The goal of most supplier negotiations today is no long-lasting just to get the lowest price.It is also to find new and advanced ways to meet a wide variety of business challenges, a good deal by tapping into the knowledge and expertise of the supplier community and a good relationship. Harley can be sure their suppliers will not share competitive information with competitors on 3reasons. i. Harley is focused on bui lding closer relationships with suppliers. The company does not use contracts but has instead begun to use the master supply agreement (MSA).The MSA is a list of guidelines for the relationship, rules to follow, and resolutions should problems arise, used with ?strategic suppliers with whom they anticipate having long-term relationships. Harley is just beginning to formalize the process of certifying suppliers as strategic, the cycle manufacturer has such relationships with about 250 of its 350 suppliers. These suppliers command special attention from Harley and are invited quarterly for business planning meetings (BP). BPs are thematically organized meetings intentional to help supplier understand Harleys strategic issues. They give suppliers an prospect to provide input and feedback, as well as coordinate on new projects. Strategic suppliers are brought in early to the design phase.They are brought in house, and many even have desks at Harleys Capitol sire research and desig n facility. Their input is solicited at the idea phase so that there do not have to be many revisions during the development process. They are also kept informed of the latest Harley strategies through a company newsletter, Harley World. ii. Supplier Management & Procurement Strategies of Wisconsin OEMs- Instead of purchasing all the parts for its brake systems and then assembling them in-house Harley would purchase an assembly that it would integrate with other purchased assemblies.Now, entrance into the Harley supply base will increasingly be secured through possession of the technologies and capabilities to build whole systems. Even if a supplier still supplies discrete parts directly to Harley, they will increasingly need to be able to apply new processes to those parts in order to continue doing business with the company, and new suppliers are added yearly as Harley pursues new technological capacities. iii. Suppliers have opportunity to have direct business buyer with full ef fort to help them to meet demands through its continuous improvement team.Harley good relationship makes them think twice to share competitive information with its competitors. For example Unisource Com. Supplier to Harley has grown from RM1. 5million in 1998 to between RM15-20million on 2001. This opportunity is like a gold mine to let go and stone-broke master supply agreement that they have promise. Trust between suppliers and business buyer have advantage and disadvantage i. Trust between suppliers and buyers generates meaning(a) benefits including motivating better performance and reducing negotiation time ii. gaolbreak apart, a trusted buyer-supplier relationship can be a evidentiary barrier to entry for competitors. iii. The negative side of trust is that it can projection screen you to opportunities that arise outside established relationships The important of trust depend on both relationship, are those relationship have the objective to help each other to reach their o bjective. If yes the trust is most important thing between supplier and business buyer in other word they must have win-win situation.