大众的2018战略（节选）
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每三个月，大众汽车集团（Volkswagen Group）总部的一支高管团队就会登上飞机，从德国北部的沃尔夫斯堡飞往东南方向1000英里外靠近巴塞罗纳的一个秘密地点，在地中海的粼粼波光中审查新的车型申请。虽然西班牙的气候非常宜人，不过没人把这些会议当成旅行休养。带队的是大众CEO马丁•文德恩，他是个很苛刻的工程师。要做的工作有很多。大众旗下共有10个轿车和卡车品牌，245款不同的车型。其中有在西班牙生产的低端品牌SEATs，高端的奥迪（Audi）等品牌，MAN品牌下的卡车和巴士，还有售价高达240万美元的高端品牌布加迪威龙（Bugatti Veyron）。每一台乘用车都要经过严格的检查。大众并不经常变换自己的车型，所以更要确保每款车型都是全优之选。别忘了，这家公司生产的甲壳虫（Beetle）轿车已经有65年的历史了。虽然大众对新车型的审查很严格，但还是不能确保万无一失。比如今年3月大众的子品牌宾利（Bentley）在日内瓦车展（the Geneva Motor Show）上展出了一款SUV概念车。一位网友在博客里称，它看起来就像“一个穷人概念里的富人车。”一位大众的高管也承认：“我们销售的车型太多了，难免有一些不明智的决策。” 今年秋天的巴黎车展（the Paris Motor Show）上，大众将展出第七代高尔夫（Golf）掀背车，标志着高尔夫这棵车坛长青树又将在设计上翻开新的一章。据说2013版高尔夫本质上很像1974年版的高尔夫掀背车，不过它在设计和技术上都有大量创新，足以使它保住欧洲最畅销车型的地位。很少有其它的汽车厂商可以做到这种地步，不过大众的表现却一直十分优秀。它长期以来一直是西欧最主要的汽车厂商，而且现在也是中国和南美洲销量第一的厂商，同时在美国也正在迅速崛起。2012年，大众在美国的销量比去年上涨了30%。从全球看来，去年大众的销量比前年猛增100万台，超过了通用（General Motors）和丰田（Toyota），一跃成为全球最大的汽车厂商。【通用去年的销量903万台虽然超过了大众的827万台，但其中有120万台要划入它在中国的合资企业通用五菱（Wuling）的业绩，而通用在五菱中只占了少数股权。】 大众汽车（在财富世界500强排行榜上排名12）拥有丰富的技术资源。它的50多万名员工中，光是工程师就有35,000人。而且大众的股东基础也很稳定，20%的股权归德国的下萨克森州所有。过去大众最缺乏的是方向、重心和紧迫感。2007年，大众售出了620万台汽车，但税前利润只有区区6%。公司发展一度陷入停滞。因此大众CEO文德恩设立了一些雄心勃勃的目标——在2018年前将年销量提高到1,000万台，税前利润提高到8%以上。他希望大众能成为全球利润最高的汽车厂商。不仅如此，他还表示大众应该成为“世界上最吸引人、可持续发展能力最强”的汽车厂商。 文德恩把这些多少有些矛盾的目标捆绑在一起，起了个名字叫做“2018战略”。这个透明的时间表就像是甲壳虫轿车的涡轮增压器。2011年，大众不仅在销量上创下了纪录，它的税前利润（包括一次性收益）也爬升到将近12%——这个数字对软件商来说有些低，但对汽车行业来说却十分抢眼。一位金融分析师甚至把大众称为“世界的主宰”。通过让所有工程师围绕着同一个目标努力，大众成功地提高了生产效率，改进了产品质量。最重要的是，它使大众成功执行了一个大多数厂商经常尝试却很少成功的战略：将同样的基本零部件用于多个品牌的不同车型，从而大量削减工艺、采购和制造成本。大众称之为“工具箱战略”。如果执行不利的话，它可能催生一系列廉价化的汽车，不过如果执行得当的话，它将带来惊人的效率。 译者：朴成奎 |
Every three months a team of top executives from Volkswagen Group boards a plane at headquarters in northern Germany and flies 1,000 miles southeast to a secret location near Barcelona to review the design of proposed new models under the shimmering Mediterranean light. Although the break from Wolfsburg's climate is welcome, nobody would characterize the meetings as junkets; chief executive Martin Winterkorn, a demanding engineer, is in charge, and there is a lot of work to do. VW makes 245 different models sold under 10 car and truck brands, ranging from economical SEATs built in Spain to upscale Audis and MAN trucks and buses and, at the very top, Bugatti Veyrons that sell for up to $2.4 million. Every single passenger car receives a careful going-over. VW has to get its cars right because it doesn't change them very often. After all, this is the company that built the Beetle for 65 years. Even with the intensive reviews, mistakes are made -- like the garish Bentley SUV concept VW revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in March, which one blogger described as looking "like a poor person's idea of a rich person's car." As a VW executive admitted, "In this galaxy of models we sell, there is always a decision that escapes." The latest chapter in VW's saga of long-running designs will be written this fall when the seventh generation of the Golf hatchback is unveiled at the Paris Motor Show. The 2013 Golf is expected to be fundamentally similar to the hatchback that was introduced in 1974, but with enough design tweaks and technological flourishes to enable it to remain the bestselling car in Europe. Few other mass-market manufacturers could get away with such predictability, but VW is making a virtue of consistency. Long the dominant automaker in Western Europe, VW is now the top-selling manufacturer in China and South America, and it is quickly gaining momentum in the U.S., where it has moved 30% more cars so far in 2012 than the year before. Globally, VW added sales of more than 1 million passenger cars last year and roared past General Motors (GM) and Toyota (TM) to become the largest automaker in the world. (GM claimed unit sales of 9.03 million last year, compared with VW's 8.27 million, but that included 1.2 million units contributed by its Chinese affiliate, Wuling, in which it holds a minority interest.) VW (No. 12 on the Fortune Global 500) has always enjoyed ample technological resources -- it numbers 35,000 engineers among its more than 500,000 employees -- and a stable ownership base; 20% of its shares are owned by the province of Lower Saxony. What it lacked in the past was direction, focus, and urgency. As recently as 2007, it recorded a pretax profit margin of a skimpy 6% on sales of 6.2 million vehicles. The company was stagnating, so Winterkorn created some stretch targets -- annual sales of 10 million cars and trucks with a pretax profit margin above 8% -- and set a goal to reach them by 2018. He wants VW to become the world's most profitable automaker. And that's not all. He also decreed that it should be the "world's most fascinating and sustainable" one. Winterkorn bundled those somewhat contradictory targets under the single heading "Strategy 2018." The transparent timetable worked like a turbocharger on a Beetle. In addition to the record sales in 2011, pretax margins (including one-time gains) climbed close to 12% -- slim for a software maker but robust for the car business. One financial analyst described VW as a "juggernaut." Aligning all those engineers with a single set of goals has improved productivity and product quality. Most important, it has enabled VW to execute a strategy that carmakers often attempt, seldom with success: using the same basic parts in dozens of car models marketed under different brands, thereby slashing costs for engineering, procurement, and manufacturing. VW calls it the "toolkit strategy." Mishandled, it can lead to a fleet of commoditized cars, but it can generate formidable efficiencies when properly executed. |
