People-focused knowledge management

Issue 5. Asterix sales staff had insufficient understanding of their
truck’s economic performance.
Immediate Action 5-1: Make life-cycle cost projections for
several scenarios to understand reasons for customer concerns
and estimates. Contact selected customers to identify the life-
cycle cost assumptions and procedures that they use. Also,
attempt to create life-cycle cost scenarios for main competi-
tors’ trucks for comparison.
Rationale: Since life-cycle costs were part of customer deci-
sions, it was imperative to understand how Asterix’s trucks
performed under different scenarios.
Expected Result: Understanding of the strengths and weak-
nesses of the life-cycle cost elements for each of Asterix’s
trucks under different customer scenarios.
Next Step: Marketing and Accounting create taskforce with
the assistance of Customer Service and Sales to perform the
analyses and to report back in three weeks.
Longer-Term Action 5-1: Evaluate which pricing changes, pro-
duction cost reductions, new product and service offerings,
etc., should be considered to improve the economics for dif-
ferent truck models for different customer scenarios.
Rationale: Insufficient attention had been given to optimize
the economics of Asterix’s trucks as seen from different cus-
tomers’ perspectives.
Enterprise Situation-Handling
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Expected Result: Greater competitive economics.
Next Step: Marketing to create a two-month taskforce to
propose changes.
Longer-Term Action 5-2: Reorganize spare parts logistics to
maximize spare parts geographical availability and reduce
waiting time to minimize customer truck downtime.
Rationale: The present philosophy had been to minimize
spare parts inventories at the expense of availabilities and
Customer Service.