Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / The China agricultural equipment market represents 48% of the equipment demand in South East Asia, and 16.5% of the global equipment demand in 2005. With John Deere’s market leadership position in the global agricultural equipment business, in order to maintain that leadership, China will have be part of their plans. John Deere started doing business in China in 1976 and has grown to four agricultural machinery factories in the country. Service parts sales make up an important part of the agricultural equipment business, both in revenue and profit. Margins on service parts sales can be as much as eight times that of new complete good sales. Within China, the John Deere dealer organization in the past has focused primary on selling complete goods, missing out on service parts sales. Successful equipment dealerships outside of China maintain a balance between complete good sales, service parts sales, and service labor sales. The objective of this research was to determine those factors that appear to impact the amount of service parts a John Deere dealership in China sells. Data was collected for three years and regression modeling used to determine what impact variables had on service parts sales and net service parts sales. The outcome of the research found that there are key attributes of John Deere dealerships along with geographical regions that John Deere can focus on in China to improve their service parts sales.

The aim of remanufacturing is to retrieve a product’s inherent value when the product no longer fulfils the user’s desired needs. By taking advantage of this inherent value through different product recovery alternatives, there is a potential for both economically and environmental advantageous recovery of products. Remanufacturing is a complex business due to the high degree of uncertainty in the production process, mainly caused by two factors: the quantity and the quality of returned products. These factors have implications both on the external processes, e.g. coordinating input of returned products with the demand for remanufactured products, as well as the internal processes that coordinates the operations within the factory walls. This additional complexity needs to be considered when organising the remanufacturing system. The objective of this dissertation is to explore how remanufacturing companies can become more competitive through analysing and managing material flows and remanufacturing processes. The first issue discussed in this dissertation is the drivers that make companies interested in remanufacturing products in the first place. The conclusion is that the general drivers are profit, company policy and the environmental drivers. In a general sense, the profit motivation is the most prevalent business driver, but still there are situations where this motivation is secondary to policy and environmental drivers. Secondly, the need to balance the supply of returned products with the demand for remanufactured products shows that the possible remanufacturing volumes for a product are dependent on the shape of the supply and demand distributions. By using a product life cycle perspective, the supply and demand situations can be foreseen and support is given on possible strategies in these different supply and demand situations. Thirdly, how used products are gathered from customers is categorised by seven different customer relationship types. These types all have different effects on the remanufacturing system, and the characteristics of these relationships are disused in detail. When considering the remanufacturing process within the factory walls, a generic remanufacturing process was developed that divides the remanufacturing process into five different phases; pre-disassembly, disassembly, reprocessing, reassembly and the post-assembly phase. These different phases are separated by three different key decision points in the process that also have a major impact on the material planning of the process. For the remanufacturing material planning and production planning, the possibility to apply lean principles can be difficult. One foundation for implementing lean principles in new production is the existence of standardised processes that are stable and predictable. In the remanufacturing system, the possibilities to realise a predictable process is limited by the “normal” variations in quantity and the quality of the returned cores. Even though lean principles can be problematic to implement in the remanufacturing environment, this dissertation proposes a number of solutions that can be used to make the remanufacturing process leaner.

The thesis has been performed at Volvo Car Customer Service in Gothenburg, Sweden. The output from the study will support Volvo to secure the Just-In-Time delivery of referrals for the after-market. The scope was limited to referrals from pre-planned orders, which occurs when there is no availability in the distribution centre where the orders were placed. Volvo's main warehouse in Europe is the Central Distribution Centre, which process referrals. The warehouse had an ongoing organisational change during this study. The concern was that the change would not lead to optimal conditions for processing referrals for different markets. It was therefore important to preserve the market knowledge in order to maintain a reliable referral service. A qualitative study was used and the information was gathered primarily through semi-structured interviews. Literature was studied both initially and continuously through the study. Analyse of the literature, current situation and data collection generated ideas for possible ways of securing the referral process and improvements. Benchmarking and Workshop was also performed in order to obtain further ideas. The result of this study was an information material containing information about all concerned markets, overview of referral flow and information regarding how the Central Distribution Centre needs to print referrals. The proposals suggested for future work were explained in long- and short-term. The short-term suggestions include use of the developed material in order to preserve the knowledge along with providing correct working conditions. For long-term suggestions focus has been on how to reduce or remove the printing problem. For future work Volvo Car Customer Service should consider these proposals in order to secure and improve the referral service.

在微利時代，各家廠商的技術成熟，成本結構也愈來愈接近，產品也愈來愈沒有差異化，以本研究所處的產業－工程機械產業AM（After Market，售後服務零組件市場），更是如此，現今比的是通路，誰擁有通路，誰就有較大的競爭優勢。 從2000年起網際網路盛行，提供了很多新興企業利用虛擬通路發展的機會，諸如亞馬遜、EBAY等，也有很多實體企業建置電子商務平台，其目的多在宣揚企業的經營理念，介紹組織和產品。實體企業的B2B電子商務平台多數是在電子數據交換，很少像B2C一樣具交易的功能。 本研究主要從通路出發，以一個貿商的觀點，為什麼要架構一個B2B電子商務平台？如何架構一個B2B電子商務平台？平台的策略為何？平台的內容為何？探討由實轉虛後的可行性，B2B電子商務平台內容如何建置才能對貿商有加值作用。 B2B電子商務平台有去中間化的功能，本研究證實除去中間化，可縮短供應鏈，還可以讓新進產品更有競爭力。另外庫存量多寡在各行各業都是大課題，庫存過多是罪惡，但不足亦降低了對顧客的服務。本研究除產品的選擇外，也運用了資料倉儲的概念，試圖做到快速供應及零庫存的目標。 平台還需增加什麼才能更有價值呢？由於本產業零件產品複雜，知識庫的建立有其必要，知識庫在本研究佔很重要的角色，本研究的知識庫是站在整條供應鏈的角度所思考的，知識庫讓此平台發揮了最大的附加價值。 品牌亦是本研究關心的重點，利用此平台，加深顧客對通路品牌的印象，達到行銷的目的。最後希望透過本研究，讓大家對本產業－工程機械零件的瞭解和售後維修服務市場的特色。

The Master's thesis focuses on customer satisfaction and its relationship to profitability, which is becoming an increasingly more relevant topic of daily discussion among the managers across all industries. The search for an optimal strategy that would lead to a consequent increase of both could be compared to a search for the "holy grail" or to an invention of the "perpetuum mobile" of business. The overall goal of my thesis is to design a strategy that would have the abovementioned attributes and would lead to an increase of profitability and customer satisfaction for the Hilti Czech republic and its after-market service. The theoretical part reviews the general academic literature connected with the topic. The practical part focuses on the company Hilti AG - a global premium provider of building construction tools and consumables in B2B segment, and examines especially its after-market service department. The first section of the practical part analyses the outcomes of the qualitative expert in-depth interviews with managers across different business units and departments and with real customers. The second part of the practical part proposes concrete steps that will lead to an increase of profitability and customer satisfaction.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T16:45:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ivan Farah Lelis.pdf: 515426 bytes, checksum: 190520fecf7f4e729fb2c3cadc02bef0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-10-07 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Auto parts Industry has an important participation in the Brazilian economy, with a turnover of US$ 29,8 billion/year, investing US$ 1,3 billlion/year and keeping 200.000 jobs. Despite the importance, the sector has been presenting negative profits. Some issues can collaborate with this bad result: incorrect business strategy, high cost of production, expending labor, cost of non quality, products replacement due to failure, etc. This paper will have focus on the first issue: business strategy in auto parts sector. This paper will identify and understand the business strategies used by auto parts companies and verify the respective effectiveness, concluding about the direct relationship between business strategy and financial results. The auto parts business strategies are evaluated according the theories of business strategies. This study involves a theoretical reference about auto parts, strategy, business strategy and finance. This theoretical reference is tested by interviews and searches into auto parts companies. At the end, a business strategy model is proposed to auto parts companies in Brazil / A Indústria de Autopeças tem uma grande importância dentro da economia nacional, faturando e investindo anualmente respectivamente US$ 29,8 bilhões e US$ 1,3 bilhões e gerando 200 mil empregos. Apesar dessa grande relevância, o setor vem apresentando resultados financeiros negativos. Algumas variáveis detalhadas a seguir podem colaborar com esses resultados financeiros negativos: estratégia de negócios não eficaz no mercado, alto custo de produção, excesso de mão de obra, custo da não qualidade do produto, necessidade de reposição de produto no mercado, entre outras. A primeira variável é o foco dessa pesquisa: estratégia de negócios no mercado de autopeças. O presente estudo busca identificar e entender as estratégias de negócios adotadas pelas empresas de autopeças e verificar sua respectiva eficácia, comprovando a relação direta entre a adoção da estratégia de negócios e o resultado financeiro. As estratégias de negócios adotadas pelas empresas de autopeças são comparadas com as teorias sobre estratégias de negócio das empresas, sendo avaliadas as respectivas semelhanças e diferenças. O trabalho é estruturado no referencial teórico que trata do tema, nas entrevistas e nos questionários realizados em indústrias de autopeças. Por fim, é proposto um modelo de estratégia de negócio eficaz para o mercado de autopeças no Brasil