Judging from the recent financial reports released by many car companies, profits have increased very little. Ford Motor Company, Audi Company, General Motors Company, BMW Company, etc. In the latest financial report, the income and profits of all companies are on a downward trend. Almost all car companies have begun to take measures of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" to cope with the impact of the market downturn. As early as the end of last year, GM began to carry out restructuring plans including global 15% layoffs and the shutdown of five factories in the United States. Audi plans to save/kloc-0.5 billion euros in the five years from 2065438 to 2022, while BMW, Ford and Toyota have also set similar cost optimization targets.
Even Daimler Group, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, once one of the car companies with the highest profit margin in the world, further reduced the profit margin. Under the dual pressure of transformation and profit, Daimler Group began to plan a series of "throttling" plans last year, such as layoffs, cutting supply chain costs, cutting investment in fixed assets and reducing operating costs. The official of Daimler Group said that it plans to cut personnel costs by more than 654.38+0.4 billion euros by the end of 2022.
However, from the data point of view, in 20 19, Daimler Group's revenue was172.7 billion euros, a year-on-year increase of 3%. However, its earnings before interest and tax decreased from 20111billion euros to 4.3 billion euros, and its net profit decreased by 64.5% to 2.7 billion euros, the biggest decline in ten years. Daimler's operating income has been on the rise, but its net profit has halved. Why? The reason is that non-operating factors have a great influence on Daimler's profit decline.
The financial report shows that in 20 19, Daimler's fine and related expenses for "diesel exhaust valve" alone were at least 4.024 billion euros, while the loss caused by Takada airbag incident was at least 9.465438 billion euros. Among them, Daimler was fined up to 870 million euros by the German government for violating diesel emission regulations. In addition, in just 20 19 a year, it paid more than 1 1 100 million euros in legal fees, which became the key factor that caused the sharp decline in cash flow, and also made the cost paid by Daimler in the transformation more expensive, making it more difficult to achieve the goal of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
Let's look at the China market, the largest single market of Mercedes-Benz in the world. Although Mercedes-Benz and smart brands delivered 702 new cars 10 in China in 2065,438+09, up 4% year-on-year, accounting for about 30% of Daimler's total global sales of passenger cars (2,385,000 vehicles), and achieved good results, they were recalled continuously in 2065,438+09. The financial losses caused by quality problems are only explicit losses, but the hidden losses are huge, which have great influence on brands, markets and benefits. Quality can produce huge economic benefits, and the premise of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" is to ensure quality control. It is meaningless to talk about reducing costs and increasing efficiency without quality.
It can be said that the automobile recall system is a mirror that reflects the quality problem and also reflects the responsibility of automobile enterprises. According to the information released by the State Administration of Market Supervision, in 20 19, 56 automobile brands in the domestic passenger car market issued a recall notice 167, recalling 6,809,700 defective cars. Compared with the total recall of 20 1812.43 million vehicles, it decreased by 45%. Compared with the recall of10 million in previous years, both the number of brands and the total number of recalls of 20 19 decreased significantly. This shows that automobile enterprises pay more and more attention to quality, and quality control is becoming more and more standardized and strict.
In 2020, in the face of the spread of epidemic and the shortage of global supply chain, it is still one of the most important tasks for global car companies to cut expenses, reduce costs and improve efficiency to optimize cash flow. But car companies still have to put quality control and quality control in the first place, otherwise the "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" gained by losing quality control is nonsense. As Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, once said, "Quality should be everyone's concern. You can't be slow and steady on this issue, you must be crazy about it. You have to be a madman with quality problems, or quality problems will turn you into a madman. "
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.