Studies and Research on the Possibility of Cost Reduction within the Knowledge - based Organizations in the European Car Industry

Nowadays special attention should be paid to the management of all costs more than ever. All managers take intensive actions to this purpose, no matter what kind of organization they lead, making efforts to reduce the cost level to the lowest limit. Major decreases have been recorded in the industry of car service as far as the volume of activities is concerned, and implicitly the level of incomes in the field of car sales, spare parts and services. There are several questions we are trying to answer at the end of this study? o Which expenses should we completely give up? o Which expenses should we reduce? o Which expenses should we maintain? o Which directions should we invest to despite the economical crisis? Nevertheless, we consider that the key to success is the identification of new methods to increase incomes because cost reduction alone, without the support of income increase, will ensure the survival of the organization only for a short period of time. If we analyze the present economic context, we will notice the opportunity to hire new qualified staff with relatively lower costs than the ones we had last year. In crisis situations, many organizations give up the employees that they have invested in for years. Such employees will be available to competitors. At this moment, we must pay greater attention to the requirements in our field of activity regarding our employees’ competence, their instruction, the management of all resources, particularly the human resources. It is well-known that in crisis situations we must stimulate creativity and this is the behavior we should all have today and the direction that we should follow. We need to become creative, to eliminate waste, to explore niche segments and to identify new development opportunities. All these approaches will contribute to leading positions in the market and will differentiate us from our competitors. Manuscript received December 28, 2010; revised December 28, 2010. This work was supported in part by the Constantin OPREAN, Mihail Aurel TITU, Daniel GRECU and Mariana TITU from the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Romania. Constantin OPREAN is Professor to the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (Faculty of Engineering) and is the Rector of the University (e-mail: [email protected]). Mihail Aurel TITU is Professor to the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (Faculty of Engineering) and is the Director of the Intellectual Property Department of the University and Director of the European PATLIB Centre (corresponding author to provide phone: 0040.269.249.444, e-mail: [email protected]). Daniel GRECU is a ScD student at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and is the Manager of Autoklass Bucharest (e-mail: [email protected]). Mariana TITU is a PhD student at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and is the Manager of Volksbank Sibiu (e-mail: [email protected]). Index Terms — Cost Reduction, Car Industry, Quality Management, Knowledge-based Organizations