Dino Lanno Named New Senior Vice President of Safelite Solutions

Dino Lanno has been named the new senior vice president of Safelite® Solutions. In this role, he is responsible for strategic and national account sales and client relationships, national contact center operations and strategic direction of claims management services.

Lanno first joined Safelite® Group in 1989 and has held numerous leadership positions in the company in both field operations and the corporate home office. Most recently, Lanno served as senior vice president of Safelite’s manufacturing and supply chain for eight years where he was instrumental in developing and executing the award-winning strategy to redefine the size, scope and complexity of Safelite’s supply chain bringing unrivaled inventory availability, quality and service to the business.

Ten Ways Autonomous Driving Could Redefine the Automotive World

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) represent a major innovation for the automotive industry, but their potential impact with respect to timing, uptake, and penetration remains hazy. While high levels of uncertainty currently surround the issue, the ultimate role that AVs could play regarding the economy, mobility, and society as a whole could be profound.

In an effort to look beyond today’s rapidly changing predictions on AV penetration, we interviewed more than 30 experts across Europe, the United States, and Asia and combined these findings with our insights to arrive at ten thought-provoking potential implications of self-driving cars.

The widespread use of AVs could profoundly affect a variety of industry sectors. To explore these implications in depth, we focused on three time horizons of AV diffusion: before such vehicles are commercially available to individual buyers, when they are in the early stage of adoption, and when they become the primary means of transport.

Tension Builds Between Automakers and Tech Industry

The competition between the auto industry and the IT industry to take the driving seat in the car is heating up.

While Apple and Google with their smartphones are in a strong position to control in-car infotainment systems, car manufacturers are fighting to recover control of all the car's advanced electronics.

Industry giants like Ford and Toyota are considering cooperating on systems to integrate smartphones into future models, according to a Bloomberg report, something which would bring them into competition with Apple's Carplay and Google's Android Auto.

Volkswagen Group Goes Live with Automated Leaselink Updates

Pictured: Amanda Morgan, Customer Relationship Manager, Group Fleet Services at Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen Group has gone live with a new automated system of updating the Leaselink procurement platform from Ebbon-Dacs that will save thousands of hours a year in manpower for its dealer network and increase transparency for leasing companies.

The current system requires more than 700 dealers across the Volkswagen Group’s five brands – Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles – to manually input the status of all vehicle orders they receive from leasing companies.This can amount to up to 20,000 leasing company orders in one current order bank – a huge number with an enormous potential for manual input errors.

Volkswagen Group calculates that it takes one hour to upload every 100 vehicle status updates, a total of around 200 man hours each week. Now, under a new automated process, all new vehicle order details, including registration number, VIN number and engine number, will be uploaded directly into the Leaselink e-procurement platform from the Volkswagen Group’s new vehicle order bank.