Study of the Sales-to-Delivery Process for Complete Buses and Coaches at Scania CV

Sammanfattning: Background: Customers for buses and coaches on the European market ask for complete vehicles from one supplier. Since Scania CV are only manufacturing chassis, their sales companies must co-operate with body builders in order to offer a complete product and service backup. This means that the sales companies in connection with every order have to deal with two order processes, one for Scania CV and one for the body builder. Managing this situation is complicated and time consuming. To be able to offer short lead-times, Scania’s sales companies build up stocks of chassis and completed vehicles. Due to heterogeneity in the specification between markets, safety stock is hard to sell in neighbouring markets and remains over long periods with the sales companies if the market demand decreases. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to find ways for the Scania sales force to spend more time on selling vehicles and less time on administrative tasks. The purpose is also to find ways to reduce the lead-time for delivery of complete vehicles, and to reduce the stock levels. Delimitation: The study is focusing on Scania’s Globally Preferred Partners, Omni and Irizar. It concerns the activities and situation on the West- European market. The study of the sales-to-delivery process has been focused on sales and order. Methodology: The study is undertaken with a systems approach, since it allows for taking into account the relations between different actors and for considering how the sub-processes should be designed to optimise the Sales to Delivery process as a whole. Qualitative data has been collected through in-depth interviews with key individuals. Conclusions: Routines for information handling and exchange between the parties in the sales-to-delivery process need to be established. Scania should focus on and enhance the collaboration with the Globally Preferred Partners, and all activities should be performed with a complete vehicle perspective. The sales companies need to have access to proper sales tools, and CESOW could be used to provide such support. Communication between parties should be prompt, and exchanged information must be correct and updated. The sales companies should be allowed to focus on DDD for complete vehicles. By implementing several SD-dates vehicles in pipeline can be accessible for more than one market. Routines for forecasting need to be implemented.