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Napoli

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Was Silvio the right choice to head the India operation?
In my opinion, I do not think that was the right choice. Even though India’s growth potential was significant, there are several reasons why I think so. First of all, Exchange rates and unforeseen duties further frustrated market development efforts. When it comes to international business those risks always would be cause of challenge. For example Japanese lumber company in Canada decreased their sales from last year because of change of currency rate of Japanese yen and Canada dollar. Making the transferred sub-assemblies even more expensive was the fact that there were exchange rate fluctuations favoring Indian currencies. Second, Schindler 's manufacturing cost structures were …show more content…

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Meet Silvio Napoli
After having taught this case study for four years and having gone through thorough discussion and analysis of its points, I decided in preparing for a recent class to cut through all the conjecture and get right to the source to see what really happened. I called Silvio Napoli. He graciously gave me fifteen minutes of one of his busy mornings.
We went over the case 's more glaring lessons quickly, and then Silvio provided some great insights into lessons he learned trying to create a subsidiary for Schindler in India. Here are his take-aways:
• A "swatch" strategy of low-cost market entry was the wrong choice. In the case study much is said about how Schindler 's CEO was fascinated with the success of low-end, mass produced Swatch watches -- a 90 's phenomenon -- more than one General Manager of Manufacturing Operations strove to emulate this low-end production strategy.
• Schindler 's manufacturing cost structures were compatible with customization, not commoditization. Silvio said that was one of the biggest challenges he faced as getting transfer costs for elevators to a price point internally where building elevators made sense. The case study

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