Strategic challenges and recommendations for Schindler's India operations

Silvio Napoli Schindler India Case Analysis

As Luc Bonnard, how would you evaluate Silvio's first seven months as General Manager of Schindler's India operation.

It has been a failure on many fronts. With not a single elevator sold with the exception of the glass-sided unit being installed without Silvio's knowledge when he was out of the country due to the birth of one of his children, the low-end, no-customization strategy is failing fast. The supply chain that was supposed to be entirely functioning within India is not even close to being production-level and the Swatch strategy is not generating any business whatsoever. The biggest failure however is at the cultural level both within India and most importantly, with the production center managers Schindler has running various manufacturing plants throughout Europe and globally. The lack of congruence on cultural dimensions can also have many manifestations, from the failure of a business strategy to the lack of support for challenging business and strategy objectives (Alpander, Lee, 1995).

The Swatch strategy is proving to be a failure at a very systemic and fundamental level in the Indian subsidiary's operations as well. Never before has Schindler abandoned its mass customization and engineer-to-order strategies in favor of no customization whatsoever. The greater the customization in any product strategy the higher the level of profitability (Sharma, LaPlaca, 2005). To enter a new market with no customization or build-to-order capability is to ignore the basic foundations of customer listening and responding to customer needs that any successful business is based on (Holweg, Pil, 2001). For Luc Bonnard it is time to make a change in the Schindler India subsidiary and either bring in a more experienced Indian General Manager who understands both the Indian culture and the specific requirements of Indian elevator sales, or look to create a joint venture to mitigate risk. He cannot continue investing value time with Silvio Napoli hoping things turn around; there are too many systemic problems in the organization right now to do that.

Q.2. What advice would you give Silvio to address some of the challenges he is facing in the Indian operations as well as with European operations that he has to deal with?