Porter’s Value Chain

Volkswagen, Audi, Seat and Skoda are all part of the same car manufacturing group. The group tries to standardise many components across the range so that huge numbers of identical components can often be used. The large volume of production or purchasing will reduce unit costs.

The quality being talked about is really about the quality of the company’s response to demand as flexibility means that customers will not have to wait as long. Additionally, to achieve flexibility, high automation is often needed and this usually improves the physical quality of production as less chance of human error.