Vie in lions' den
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DO VEHICLE manufacturers meet the requirements of the customers? That was the westion which dropped VICroR WRIGHT, General Sales Vlanager UK Bedford Commercial Vehicles, right into a iornet's nest. Doing battle for the operators was DENNIS BAKER, Director of Supplies and Transport Tesco Group, who first suggested that the manufacturers did little in the way of market research towards satisfying customer requirements.
He deplored the situation ryhere failure on the part of the -nanufacturer to supply on or -)ear the original delivery date ould result in the inclusion of :wo increases in price. Mr Baker -ounded off his paper by saying :hat, if an operator had arrived 3t a vehicle replacement budg?t, the manufacturers should jive him the opportunity to 3pend it where he wanted.
At a largely operator confeence, any representative of a vehicle manufacturer is on a hiding to nothing. But Victor Wright, defended the manufacturers by saying he thought they did an excellent job in responding to the many individual needs of the operator. All of us are seeking to improve — you are our customers and we hope you can talk to us about your requirements.'" The forum which followed the two papers ended up as a series of opinions from operators and manufacturers rather than a straightforward question and answer session.
Refuting Mr Baker's comments on price increases due to late delivery, Colin Kneller, engineering director, Heavy Transport (ECC) Ltd, claimed that he had negotiated, with his dealers, a fixed price whatever the delivery date and, furthermore, had agreed upon a warranty mileage far outside the manufacturer's normal warranty.
He was quite blunt as to how this had been achieved: "We didn't sit down and moan — we met the distributors. We have the advantage that, in our area, we are a big fish in a small pool. If they want to hang on to our business, they must play ball.
Mr Kneller went on to say he thought the best thing that had happened to the UK commercial vehicle market was the advent of foreign competition. "I would rather the industry built up to a quality rather than down to a price," he said.
The large multi-natoinal companies offer little choice to the operator to satisfy his individual needs — that was the claim made by V. J. Scrivener, divisional technical manager. Tate and Lyle Transport Ltd. The present situation could be summed up by saying that the large manufacturers completely control the market offering little choice to the operator, he said.
Any criticism of the manufacturer by either the speaker or the audience usually brings a response from the floor from other vehiclebuilders and this year's Fleet Management Conference was no exception.
Putting forward the philospophy of the three-pointed star Tony Stenham, of Mercedes-Benz UK Ltd, said it was impossible for one design of commercial vehicle to meet the varying requirements of indivi
dual markets. -You can't even get close to the concept."
Mr Stenham went on to say that individual countries had developed their own particular system over the years. He singled out the UK as an example, with its high maximum speed for lorries compared with the rest of Europe. In the UK, the operator is extremely weight conscious, whereas on
the Continent, over-specifying is the rule. "The most important factor is to make a range flexible enough to meet individual markets.'" The problems associated with spare parts availability or continued overleaf
rather the lack of it were highlighted by Harold Russett, managing director of Harold A.
Russett Ltd. He suggested that Vic Wright had by-passed two of the most vital points relating, firstly, to the supply of the spares and, secondly, to their cost. In his experience, the only way of getting spares was by the VOR system which meant that the bits arrived, but the operator lost his discount and, on top of that, had to pay a carriage charge.
Mr Russett contended that the distributor should hold these spares in stock and that the actual extra revenue obtained by the manufacturers from spares sales bordered on fraud.
More professionalism from dealers and salesmen was the call from N. G. Trotman, group maintenance engineer, Amey Roadstone Corporation Ltd. In his opinion, a lot of problems which arose with vehicles could be directly related to bad specification in the first place.
Mr Trotman also put forward the suggestion that the terms of a manufacturer's warranty should be expressed in pence per mile rather than as parts and labour over X months or Y miles.
In reply to the various points put forward Mr Wright asked how much should the manufacturer dictate to the dealers; what spares they should carry in stock? As far as his company was concerned, Bedford had an enormous investment in spares which could be expressed in tens of millions of pounds. The Bedford service manual listed 90,000 part numbers and he contended that no dealer could hope to carry them all. "It depends on the efficiency of the dealer to decide what he is to carry.'" Availability is influenced by two things — efficiency of the individual dealer and the efficiency of the component supplier.
As Mr Wright said: "'At Bedford, we are concerned over our own problems. We don't like it, delays cost us a lot of money as well."
Referring to Mr Trotman's comments on professionalism, Mr Wright agreed that this should be present on both sides of the transaction. He emphasised that Bedford transport specialists had to sit a series of exams with this very aim in mind. -There is nothing worse than getting involved in a problem where it becomes clear that the vehicle was never designed to do the job in the first place."