Abstract:
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The Tooling industry takes the product creation process to a key position between product
development and series production. Through the provision of tools and moulds, it is the
central enabler of an efficient mass production of standard products.1
Due to the increasing globalization and the associated increase in the number of
competitors, the competitive situation has worsened. Tool making companies from high rents
countries are forced to use the potential of markets with lower factor costs. The joint of
markets in networks is a sourcing strategy that rarely leads to the desired results: Strong
variations in quality and unsatisfactory on-time deliveries are typical challenges that, due to
the described role of Tooling, severely disrupt the production process.
These challenges come from an insufficient Market Intelligence application. Market
Intelligence is all the information and relationships of a given market which are relevant for a
company. Therefore, it offers the basis for business decisions.
To ensure a successful tool supply in new markets, Tooling companies need a sufficient
transparency of the most important market-specific information to use it as the basis of
operational and strategic decisions.
The aim of this work is the systematic evaluation of markets. At the same time, it presents
those industry-specific factors of Tooling which must be taken into account, making an
special approach into the evaluation of the level of Market Intelligence achieved by such
industry. The structure of the thesis is represented in the next figure (see Figure 1)
This thesis gives an approach to the concept of Market Intelligence and its current
development state with some highlights in the latest research findings. Also it will provide an
evaluation method to analyse international markets and extract their useful information for
the Tooling Industry. Finally it will give proof of the reliability of the described method by the
study of a given market, the Spanish market, and the examination of the most outstanding
Tooling companies. |