Bmw Group Case Study

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                                    Members: Indrit Trashani              : 1404494

                                                        Talha Burhan Şimşek  : 1358704

[pic 6]   Designwork company it’s a design company founded in California USA on 1972. It started as a small company by designing several kind of products and by getting more experienced year by year by designing different products like mobile phones, cars, trucks, railroad passenger cars. Later on Designwork made an agreement with BMW to design their cars. As the company’s success started to grow year by year BMW saw Designwork as a future strategic choice as they planned to acquire this company by taking 51% of the shares in 1985 and the rest of the shares in 1995. So by that year Designwork became a fully owned company by BMW.

Although Designwork is a fully owned company by BMW it still provides design services to other companies. Like 50% of their designworks it’s for 3rd parties. Designwork company operates in a 77 thousand square foot facility in Los Angeles USA and after being acquired by BMW they saw it as an opportunity to open into new markets by opening their first Satellite offices in Munich Germany and Shanghai as well. And one of the most important things that it’s needed to be mentioned about the DesignWork as a company is the development of sustainability management system (SMS). SMS it’s an approach to environmental impact as Designwork is trying to be sustainable as much as possible with their production process by training their employers to be environmental as much as possible, like by saving energy and taking care about the environment in daily life. One of the things that sustainability imposes is the child force labor cases, like the ones that have been occurring in some well known companies. Implying SMS affected Designwork in the supplier selection as well, as they needed to imply SMS as well so that they would be able to supply to them.                                           

                                                 [pic 7]  :BMW GROUP

• Strengths

BMW is known as a strong Brand that is known for its quality, reliability & superior customer service support and it achieved this thanks to workforce that’s composed by very highly trained and skill employers. BMW is well known about their R&D investments by spending millions on it. That’s what made the BMW one of the leader companies in the automotive industry by providing high performance cars with advanced technology features in it. BMW is known for its design as well thanks to the Designwork company by giving BMW cars one of the best designs a car can have. By imposing the sustainability regarding to the environment BMW created less CO2 emission cars by introducing to the market their first fully hybrid cars by increasing the BMW product portfolio which ranges from luxury sedans to their sport cars not forgetting to mention about their amazing motorcycles. So BMW has a highly diversified product portfolio what makes BMW strong when competing with their competitors.

• Weakness

When we talk about weaknesses in the BMW is not that we find too many of them but still there are some things that we can call them as weaknesses. BMW Group brand portfolio is composed by a small number of brands like Rolls Royce, Mini and Designwork which can be a weakness for them. By investing highly in R&D and having high skilled employers increases the costs of BMW products as we see during crisis people are tending to go towards cheaper products which will bring us into a fall in the BMW sales. But BMW is not the only company that needs R&D. We see Designwork investing in R&D as well which increases the cost there as well.

• Oportunities

BMW is a big and well know company that’s why it can create allot of opportunities thanks to their brand value and their financial power. One of them is by increasing their brand portfolio. By increasing strategic alliances BMW may decrease the costs and might come up with new ideas as well, as we say several minds are better than one. Regarding to the changes oil prices as they are increasing day by day and people becoming more environmental aware on BMW’s new hybrid cars which are meeting  the customer’s needs and  increase the revenues of BMW Group in the upcoming years. BMW’s long term goal is to provide cars that are fully environmental; this can bring the car generation to the next level.