For me i can accept that this distribution problem will be fixed. I cant accept bmw keeping no spares in the country even prior to this. We should not have to wait for parts from germany, they should keep a small inventory here. Its called after sales service, which seems to no longer exist. The dealerships are at the mercy of bmw sa and bmw sa doesnt seem to give a shit anymore. How can they not keep one water pump for a 650gs in the country? Come on, thats pathetic.
No, it's cheap.
The problem does not lie with JIT logistics JIT is great and supposed to make things cheaper and easier.
It 's just that the manufacturers (or the distributors?) apparently get overly greedy.
Or how would you explain that I as a little nobody can air cargo three rear shocks from Cape Town to Bangkok within 36 hours whilst bike factories & importers need three to four weeks to convey a spare part from Japan or Europe to South Africa?
It might be coincidence but the lead times of parts from overseas seem to equal the time a container spends art sea from those destinations?
JIT logistics and globalisation make the product cheaper = more profitable. Less investment on the manufacturers side since they can get away without large warehouses and without spares stock, the stock now sits at the globalised contractors, computers find, collect and channel the stream of parts and direct it to importers, dealers and customers.
The system is much more complex than the spare parts supply of old and we engineers will tell you that complexity primarily adds one thing: Failure modes.
Whilst the nerds will tell you the MTBF is a million years.
See Three Mile Island, Chernobyl & Fukushima
Topic: BEWARE - ALL POTENTIAL BMW BUYERS (Read 7763 times)
