World leader in Platform Sharing

Discuss 3 hot topics about innovation related to your organisation. Develop an idea for an innovative product or service based on the goals and portfolio management for the organisation.

Volkswagen can be considered as a founding and the namesake member of the Volkswagen Group which is an internationally based large corporation associated with making of various kind of car as well as truck brands that includes the “Audi”, “SEAT”, “Porsche”, “Lamborghini”, “Bentley”, “Bugatti”, “Scania”, “MAN”, and “Skoda”. The company is known internationally and can be considered as a multinational automotive manufacturing company. This company is associated with designing and manufacturing and is associated with distributing of the passenger and commercial vehicles, motorcycles, engines and turbomachinary as well. This also includes offering related to the services which includes financing, leasing and fleet management. In the year of 2016, this company was designated as the world’s largest manufacturer of automobiles which has been overtaking the Toyota and the same has remained in the year of 2017. At that year almost 10.7 million vehicles were sold by the company. According to the Volkswagon law no stakeholders of this company could exercise more than 20% of the firms voting right and this happens regardless of the levels of stock that they are having. This law was generally created for the purpose of protecting the organization from any kind of takeover. This company is highly involved in sports sponsorship. The Volkswagen Groups global headquarter is situated in the Volkswagen historic home of the Wolfsburg, Germany. Volkswagen is present in many parts of the world which is associated with manufacturing and assembling of the vehicles for the local markets. Since the year of 1937 Volkswagen has been production for the whole world with various kinds of fresh as well as ground breaking ideas and this is generally done on a regular basis. Beside this the company has been stayed in list of most money spent on the research and the development which was around $13.5 billion that has been done from 2013 to 2014. Some of the few innovative have been discussed in the following section of the report. 

World leader in Platform Sharing:

This is a company which has created partnership with almost 30 other makers and manufacturers all across the world. This has been done for the purpose of management related to the saving of costs without any type of reductions in the unique personality of the vehicle that they are having.  The secret that lies behind this is the ambitious MQB platform program that Volkswagen is having. These modular vehicle bases have been associated with allowing thousands of different possible combinations which has been associated with the sharing of the common family of parts. The thing that is only fixed is the fixed distance between the axles in the front to the firewall. Besides this all other things remains the same which ranges from the wheelbase to the front and the rear overhangs can be altered at a drastic rate. And only for the Volkswagen brand alone the MQB is also used by the other companies which includes the Polo, Golf, Scirocco, Jetta, Tiguan, Touran, Passat and several others.

Letting the Drivers Take a Backseat

Letting the Drivers Take a Backseat:

Stanley the car who have been residing in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in the Washington D.C has been associated with winning the US Department of Defense’s 2005 Grand Challenge for the vehicles which are totally autonomous. Stanley is nothing but a car or to be exact this is a 2004 Touareg, besides this by making use of the 3D scanning camera along with the GPS system this car has been associated with navigating a grueling course through the Mojava Desert in order to beat the competitors in the market.

Beside this the car has also won one of the race within six hours and 54 minutes this has been associated with beating the runner up by almost 10 minutes and besides this the successor of Stanley known as the Passat Wagon which was named as the junior also won the race in year of 2007.

Getting to destination with less fuel:

This car looked like a car which has come out right from the future and the car was XL1. This is a Volkswagen model which is considered as a fuel efficient car. This was a 1 liter diesel engine which consists of a twin cylinder that has been associated with the use of only 2.0 L fuel and can travel around 100KM. and by combining this with the electric motor on board the efficiency has been increasing to about 0.9 liter per 100 KM. Along with this tiny twin cylinder is associated with generation of a 55 kw and along with this light weights around 795 kg which has been associated with making the car speeding up from 0 to 100 km/h in almost 11.9 seconds. Along this this the XL Sport concept has also been associated with promising the fact that even more power would be provided that might be harnessed by the Ducati 1199 Superleggera engine. 

New innovation: Creation of new way of interacting with the cars

The LCD screens are to be included in the cars which would be associated with governing the various functionalities of the car and by including the information which would be displayed in the screen. There would exist an active information display which would be associated with showing the instrument cluster along with a large touch screen control which would be associated with providing information along with navigating the car besides this a small screen should be included which would be associated with showing the climatic conditions as well as the audio control. This might not seem to be new innovative but would certainly be setting the company apart and using this would be completely optional. Cameras are to be mounted all throughout the car ad this would associated with helping the drivers to use gestures. Along with this for the purpose of opening the sunroof the only thing that needs to be done is by sticking the hand up so as to pretend like pushing the glass backward. For the purpose of adjusting the seat the only thing that is to be done I by putting the hand underneath it and also by making use of gesture in order to indicate the direction.

Getting to destination with less fuel

 This can be considered as an automotive design which should be considered primarily while developing visual appearance or aesthetics that a vehicle is having. Beside the above mentioned features some other innovations are also to be involved in the car like automatic driver and many more. Besides the interior design the external design of the car also needs to be considered along with the color and the trim design.

Design thinking about the innovation:

The prototype design of the car has been shown in the above figure. It consists of various features which are to be included in the new innovation. The prototype consists of a GPS or Global Positioning System for locating the position of the vehicle by making use of the satellite. Besides the car would also be consisting of RADAR and LIDAR. Cameras along with the infrared sensors are also to be attached for the purpose of sensing and view the objects all around the car. The ultrasonic sensors would be associated with providing short distance data which would generally helping in park a car.

The involvement of the users in the manufacturing of the design is a complex process. But in reality the users are often associated with taking care of the nothing about the design process and the design method which are used in the design or the manufacturing operations is generally required for the purpose of producing the product. Some of the way by which the users would be involved in the process mainly includes interaction with the user. This means taking of suggestion from the drivers regarding what they need. Besides this the users can also be suggesting some of the comfort level that is needed. Besides this the design should be created according to the needs of the user. Involvement of the users generally refers to the process by which peoples would be included who have used similar type of service. This user would be involved in the planning, development and delivery of the service. User involvement can be considered to be a widely accepted principle involved in the development of systems which are used on a daily basis. Despite of this the user involvement has been considered to be a vague concept which is associated with covering many approaches. This study is associated with clarifying the nature of user involvement along with the benefits which are expected. 

Time

The time that would be generally required is much more. The implementation of this new innovation would be very much difficult in today’s world and this is just a concept. However the technology would be implemented by the year of 2020. The technologies that would be integrated into this system is emerging in this today’s world but in the future this would be fully developed and would become very easy to implement.

New innovation: Creation of new way of interacting with the cars

Resources

The resources that are generally required is various type of new technologies. Like the various kind of sensors, camera and many more. All this technologies are devolving in today’s world so to produce the car with full efficiency there is a need of many more new developed technologies. Besides this the company should also think of involving other kind of the technologies into the new innovation as well.

The cross-functional management is associated with bringing together all the activities related to various functional group which would be supporting the single innovation. For Volkswagen this type of projects are the product development programs weather is a single product of a whole vehicle or a sub-system or a component. The main focus of cross-functional management includes the moving of the work from the functional organization to another functional organization. The cross-functional management has been listed below: 

The managerial practice of Volkswagen can be categorized into six major organizational mechanisms. There exists three primary processes which are social and this processes mainly includes the “Mutual adjustment”, “Close supervision” and “integrative leadership”. This three processes forms the heads of the product department. Whereas the other three forms the standardization and this includes the “standard skills”, “standard work processes”, and “design standards”. This mechanisms would achieve an only little amount of the new innovation but if ll the innovations work together then they can active the total work. This mechanisms are associated with reinforcing each other unlike the other sophisticated tool or practices which tend to be get implemented independently. By working together the mechanisms would be associated with providing Volkswagen with a tightly linked product development system in order to chive the cross-functional while building the functional expertise as well.

Conclusion:

All the mentioned features are capable of making us look into the cars that are going to be used in future. The user would become very helpful after the implementation of this new innovation. The new innovation would be helping a lot by using the car in an easy way. By making use of the electrical vehicles the cars would become more desirable to most of the consumers. But despite of this travelling at a longer distance has not been solved yet. Various new innovation like the Maximizer technology from Minn Kota, solar power, multi-phase regenerative braking, reduced energy lighting such as LEDs, limited spectrum headlights and Xenon bulbs, Pivco and Reva heating and cooling systems, computer controlled energy routing systems are to be included. This new technologies would be helping a lot in solving a wide range of problems. Besides this the coordination along with the implementation of the new technologies would be acting as one of the key factor responsible for the success of the new innovation that is the electrical and automated vehicle. Additionally there is also a need of competing in every possible way with the conventional vehicle along with the new technological breakthroughs which are generally covered and uncovered. Despite of all this there is also a nee of taking sustained marketing effort along with a well-organized support structure in order to provide alternatives staying power against any of the conventional vehicle. 

References:

Alessandrini, A., Campagna, A., Delle Site, P., Filippi, F. and Persia, L., 2015. Automated vehicles and the rethinking of mobility and cities. Transportation Research Procedia, 5, pp.145-160.

Durantel, D. and Zoulim, F., 2016. New antiviral targets for innovative treatment concepts for hepatitis B virus and hepatitis delta virus. Journal of hepatology, 64(1), pp.S117-S131.

Guo, Z., 2013. Residential street parking and car ownership: a study of households with off-street parking in the New York City region. Journal of the American Planning Association, 79(1), pp.32-48.

Harris, M., Greaves, F., Patterson, S., Jones, J., Pappas, Y., Majeed, A. and Car, J., 2012. The North West London Integrated Care Pilot: innovative strategies to improve care coordination for older adults and people with diabetes. The Journal of ambulatory care management, 35(3), pp.216-225.

Harris, M., Greaves, F., Patterson, S., Jones, J., Pappas, Y., Majeed, A. and Car, J., 2012. The North West London Integrated Care Pilot: innovative strategies to improve care coordination for older adults and people with diabetes. The Journal of ambulatory care management, 35(3), pp.216-225.

Hirsch, J., 2014. Recent development in aluminium for automotive applications. Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China, 24(7), pp.1995-2002.

Meschut, G., Janzen, V. and Olfermann, T., 2014. Innovative and highly productive joining technologies for multi-material lightweight car body structures. Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance, 23(5), pp.1515-1523.

Schroeter, R., Rakotonirainy, A. and Foth, M., 2012, October. The social car: new interactive vehicular applications derived from social media and urban informatics. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications (pp. 107-110). ACM.

Sochor, J., Strömberg, H. and Karlsson, I.M., 2014, October. The added value of a new, innovative travel service: insights from the UbiGo field operational test in Gothenburg, Sweden. In International Internet of Things Summit (pp. 169-175). Springer, Cham.

VanSledright, B.A., 2013. Assessing historical thinking and understanding: Innovative designs for new standards. Routledge.