Major Auto Trans and Autotechnoimport LLC win Volkswagen Group Russia annual performance awards
One of the highlights of this week's autoMOTIVE Logistics Leaders Russia conference in Moscow was the presentation of Volkswagen Group Russia's annual performance awards.
The presentation ceremony was introduced by Jan Bures, Head of Group Services, Volkswagen Group Russia who began with a brief outline of the Group's Russian structure. Volkswagen manufacture locally in Kaluga, some 160 kilometres from Moscow where the VW Tiguan and the Skoda Octavia are built and where Volkswagen carries out its semi knocked down assembly for cars such as the Passat, as well as Audi and commercial vehicle models. Bures pointed out that almost every Volkswagen Group vehicle sold in Russia is built or assembled at the Kaluga plant.
In a brief summary of the Russian car market last year, Bures highlighted that, in an otherwise gloomy scenario, the premium car segment had been relatively solid, as evidenced by the sales of 15,000 Audis. Volkswagen Group sales in total declined by 28% in 2009 but this was against a backdrop of a total car market drop of 50%. During the year, the Volkswagen Group transported 70,000 truckloads of vehicles throughout Russia.
As a prelude to the awards announcement, Bures outlined the key performance indicators against which the Volkswagen Group's logistics partners are measured. These are: reaction time, transportation damage, the incidence of missing parts, order backlogs, performance at the compounds and cost control.
Bures introduced Elena Kosterewa, Head of Volkswagen Group Russia Logistics, who announced and presented the awards, the first of which was for special transportation. “We have been working with this company for a year in the area of special transportation, the delivery of the most expensive cars for marketing events where the car is presented to our customers and test driven,” she said. “Such cars are usually delivered at weekends and at night and require the ultimate in damage elimination since there is no time for repairs to be carried out. The delivery drivers have to be very professional and I am very pleased to present this award to a company from which we have not had a single problem during the year relating to the quality or timing of deliveries.”
Kosterewa presented the award to Alexander Zhuravlev of Major Auto Trans who thanked Volkswagen on behalf of all his team. “We are very proud to have been given this award by Volkswagen, one of our biggest customers. We do our best to work closely with them but, frankly, I was surprised to win because our customers do not usually present such awards. It is a great honour for us and we will try to win it again next year. It means that we are one of the top suppliers and this is really important for us and for our employees. They now know that we are moving in the right direction.”
The second award was for regular transport services. “This logistics partner differs from all the rest because, when we introduced the KPIs, it performed really excellently against them and we have seen rapid improvements over the past months. This has indicated that the head of the company has made the correct managerial decisions in terms of both the quality and timing of its transportation services,” said Kosterewa. She presented the award to Vladimir Chumachenko of Autotechnoimport LLC who expressed his gratitude for the honour.
“We are happy to have received such a great prize for our long-term partnership with the Volkswagen Company,” he said. “Working together all these years we were able to improve and to correspond to VW’s demands and requirements. In the future we plan to continue to improve the processes of strengthening friendly cooperation. For the company and our employees this award means that the company has managed to prove itself as a reliable and responsible partner which is carrying out its obligations with high professional standards. The professional staff of the company have shown a client-centred and responsible approach to the business. Without a united team and a united family at all levels of management, we would not achieve such good results. The award is not personal, all of us working together have deserved it. We wish to thank the Volkswagen team which appreciates our mutually advantageous cooperation.”
Jan Bures explained that, next year, there would be a third award for compound performance. “We hope that this will stimulate our partners to invest their attention into the improvement of the processes at our compounds,” he said.
