Volvo Cars of North America Receives Two Awards for Service Parts Distribution Excellence

ROCKLEIGH, N.J., June 13 -- Volvo Cars of North America (VCNA) was recently acknowledged as top automotive parts distribution network in the United States. Carlisle & Company surveyed over 14,000 Parts Managers representing 19 automotive brands across America to determine the best performing company. "Being selected as top performer has been one of our long term objectives, actually since 1992," according to Robert Deutsch, North American Parts Manager for VCNA. "We started with a rather good system and have systematically improved it over the years. Today our total service parts network is focused on delivering the right part, at the right time, every time ... we strive for perfection."

Award title is: Service Parts Supply Chain Fulfillment. This represents part of VCNA's long standing objective for total customer satisfaction in all phases of vehicle ownership experiences. "Today, the new car sales experience is just the first touch for customers visiting Volvo retailers. Ownership expectations, and of course meeting those demands, are key to having repeat new car sales," states Deutsch. "Our whole parts organization should take credit for this achievement. Without a collective effort and holding to our long standing objective of end service to the customer, this award would not have been possible."

Volvo Car Corporation (Gothenburg, Sweden) was acknowledged as one of three Best Practice Leaders for Global Supply Chain Fulfillment. This came from benchmarking 29 companies in the automotive, agriculture and construction equipment fields. Carlisle & Company's study looked at each business's global approach to supply chain management. "Volvo was the only automotive manufacturer to be recognized for superior total Parts distribution processes," according to Deutsch. "Our global approach is based on Volvo Cars, Sweden's unique approach of handling functions that best done centrally and of allowing in-country markets to be a local extension of the total logistics system. "We have an extremely good supply structure that is both global and local at the same time.

Volvo has been building cars with safety in mind for 80 years. The current 2007 model lineup of Volvo cars includes: the award-winning new S40 and its wagon counterpart the V50; the award-winning XC90; the sporty S60 sedan -- including the award-winning performance sedan -- S60 R and the performance wagon version -- V70 R; the versatile V70 wagon and rugged XC70 (Cross Country); the new Volvo C70 -- the convertible with the innovative retractable hardtop, and the all-new Volvo S80.

Carlisle & Company is a private consulting firm devoted to the motor vehicle industry with a business focus on service-parts strategy, program development, and operations; vehicle market strategies; and customer market research. The company's expertise includes analyzing strategic issues in service parts, service operations, organizational analysis, sales and marketing, and vehicle distribution for vehicle manufacturers on a global basis. Carlisle has offices in Boston, Southfield, MI, and Frankfurt, Germany