Whats more exclusive then 6 hand made Ferraris?

The only way to manufacture a more exclusive product then six handmade Ferrari’s is by making the purchase of each car invitation only.

 

In the past week of class we learned about the different manufacturing processes used to make products.  Between process focus, repetitive focus, product focus and mass customization we learned the pros and cons of each set up. What we are looking at here is a highly specialized and customizable version of process focus manufacturing. Ferrari, as we all know, likes to operate in a process focus environment targeting most affluent consumers on the market. Ferrari is tied to high price high quality products, just like the Rolex example in class.  All of us assume a Ferrari is among the highest quality product on the market, even when placed side by side with many of its supercar counterparts.

 

Ferrari, with the six new Sergio cars, took product focus to the extreme. They traded in on their name to entice potential customers to pay upwards of a million dollars for the new line cars.  Instead of worrying about forecasting or any type of market research, Ferrari built a car with the intention they would sell effortlessly.  The result in an invitation-only model has clearly paid off for Ferrari, as all six Sergio’s have already been sold. While the identities of the new owners are kept confidential, we are told the invitations were given to previous loyal Ferrari owners.

 

With this heavy process focus comes the ability for massive customization options.  Along with the usual online customizations that can be implemented into manufacturing, such as colors and finishes, the team went above and beyond to meet consumer satisfactions. After the purchase of a new Sergio, a life size clay model of the car is created so buyers know exactly what they are getting.

 

I personally think this is a great way to manufacture a car for optimal appeal.  The ultra-rich pride themselves on the exclusivity of the items they own. Ferrari took a shortcut to creating a uniquely exclusive product with a one of a kind manufacturing and sales model.  Being this highly process focused I cannot see anyone who bought this car having even the slightest bit of buyers remorse.  I also think that creating a clay model of the car to aid the customer’s options in the customization process is ingenious.  Many times when customizing a product online some parts do not come out exactly as intended.  Unfortunately color and sizing mishaps can happen due to computer monitor resolutions or bugs with rendering software.  Ferrari found an exact way to replicate the final product allowing so that every little customer specific nuance is included in their one of a kind Sergio.

What do think of having this low of a production run?
How to do you think the clay models influenced sale?
Ferrari Sergio

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102123753#.

Product Management Pitfalls

The first activity we did as a class was the paper puppet project. This was done as a fun way to introduce us to Project Management. The main point was to show the class how a basic supply chain worked and how to identify a bottleneck. Additionally, as a class, we learned the importance of product quality and communication. We also touched on the idea of crashing when talking about the complexity of the second task. Throughout this demonstration I kept thinking about how it was similar to a project I worked on this summer.

I started an internship a few weeks after school ended at a mobile second hand ticket broker called Ticket Scalpr (which is like a mobile stubhub).  My six coworkers and I were tasked with creating stadium guides for all the NFL and NCAAF Big Conference teams, 120 in total. Each guide included a few paragraphs of stadium history, fan pictures, videos, restaurants, and a top ten best features list for each stadium. The end result would be a website new where visiting fans could find enough information about the venue to enjoy each game like a local.  Even though team member had their assigned stadiums, communication was key. When one of us found a good source of information or pictures, it would get shared so that everyone start adding content as quickly as possible, working together to knock out the bottleneck task of finding pictures and video as quickly as possible.  We also talked about quality.  With no real quality control until a final review; we had to judge for ourselves what to use.

The project manager used many of the concepts we learned about in class. He would often ask us how long we thought it would take each one of us to complete a task so he could estimate the earliest completion time. Once the project manager identified our bottleneck he took it upon himself to crash the project for us.  He shortened the project duration by a few weeks through outsourcing the gathering of pictures and video to another contractor.  We liked this because finding the pictures and video was one of the more tedious factors of developing the guides.  Overall the project took much longer than anticipated based on the quality they wished to present on the website.  Thus, the initial goal of moving on to social media by mid July was missed, we finished all the stadium guides by the end of summer with a high degree of quality.

Right now the website has yet to launch.  I’m not sure what else needs to be added or changed to get everything ready to go, but the project has already taken longer to complete than anticipated.   The only change I could really see to make this project go smoother would be to add manpower and possibly create a information sharing library to enable the reuse of content.

 

What else would you recommend to management to speed up the project?

www.ticketscalpr.com