Chrysler 2000 Annual Report Download - page 12

Report on Operations – Overview
New technologies are an extraordinary tool that can be
employed to foster the growth of manufacturing and service
companies. The true value and the future of the Internet will
be realized precisely in this area.
The Group is determined to fully exploit the potential of
new technologies. Accordingly, it is quickening the pace at
which they are being deployed throughout the organization,
where they contribute to accelerating the flow of information,
streamlining organizational processes, supporting knowledge-
sharing systems and promoting new methods of online
training for employees, which are being developed by Isvor,
our in-house corporate university. Most of the investments
earmarked for ICT between 2000 and 2004, which
amount to one billion euros a year, will be used to achieve
these goals.
During the past year, the Group developed a number of
e-business projects. One example is Fast Buyer, which is an
offshoot of a program originally created to provide centralized
purchasing for Group users and outside customers. In 2001,
this company is expected to handle about two billion euros
in e-procurement transactions involving auxiliary materials
and traditional purchases of raw materials and services. For
its part, Fiat Auto launched Buy@Fiat, a service that, without
diminishing the pivotal relationship between dealers and
customers, helps consumers use the Internet to complete
most of the steps needed to buy a car.
THE GROUP’S CORPORATE CULTURE IS CHANGING
The ultimate goal of the profound transformation that is
reshaping every business in the Fiat Group is to drastically
change the corporate culture, altering the way in which
employees perceive and perform their jobs and feel involved
and empowered by a shared commitment to excellence.
This road, which passes through the development of
professional competencies and personal leadership, will lead
to a renewal of the spirit of initiative, creativity and innovation
and will increase the circulation of ideas and intellectual
curiosity. The Group must strive to combine the flexibility and
lack of bureaucracy of a small business with the advantages
of a large company, which include access to a vast pool of
human and financial resources and the ability to develop at
the central level best practices that can then be transferred
to all its operating units.
The Group has been relying to an increasing extent on
benchmarking to identify the best solutions and ideas to
shorten response times and to increase efficiency and the
quality of work. This method has been used successfully
to redesign the processes of the support organizations,
reducing their cost by one billion euros over two years. It will
now be applied to all core processes — product development,
production, marketing and sales — through a reengineering
effort that will begin this year.
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