1. Strategy in the second half of the 1980s: Having innovative, high-quality products and being a reliable, responsive supplier. 2. (1) Benefits of the “half-life”: it will encourage the company to reduce cost and defective rates. The total quality of the production has been improved. (2) Limitations of the “half-life”: it focuses only cost, not revenues. The quality goals and the company’s goals were in conflict. Half-life made the whole company centered on the quality improvement, while other key factors were ignored. (3) The half-life is not the same for all processes. It depends on the complexity of the process. There are two dimensions to complexity: technical and organizational. Technical complexity is high for new technologies, where part of learning process is related to understanding and refining that technology. Over time, as the technology matures and its use becomes more routine and familiar, technical complexity declines. Organizational complexity arises when a process has linkages to processes outside of its boundaries. These processes may be internal or external to the organization. The linkages may be one-way, one-time or interactive, routine or requiring real-time negotiation. So processes can run the full organizational gambit, from completely self-contained to cross-functional or cross-organizational. As the cultures, goals and objectives of the various players come into potential conflict, the rate of improvement will be expected to slow. (4) Differences between the half-life concept and the experience curve concept: the experience curve, like the half-life, is also an empirical observation. It states that for each doubling of cumulative experience, real unit cost drops by a constant percentage. Half-life deals with defects, not cost. The half-life method, on the other hand, predicts that the rate of decline of defect level is constant over time. The experience curve is a purely empirical observation and is not based on any underlying theory. On the other hand, there is a theoretical basis for the half-life model. 3. The conflicts that exist between the QIP measures and the measures reported by the financial system: the goals of the QIP were not reflected in the financial system and the financial system can’t be used to measure the QIP results. The QIP measures the defects level, which is not reflected in the financial system. Financial statement numbers should be believed because these numbers would be used publically and they are the measurements of the company’s total performance.
...and the useful life of the machine should be calculated. Then, depending on the method used, the total cost of the machine is considered as a long term asset and depreciated over the life expectancy of the asset.
When total quality management was made available in the game it became one of our other competencies in the later rounds. We have to aggressively fund awareness and accessibility until they reach 100% to try and take away sales from competitors because not of them were investing a lot into those aspects in the early rounds of the game. We invested in human resources in order to get higher productivity and a lower turnover rate. We spent $5,000 in recruiting spending and had 80 training hours. We wanted the highest caliber of workers, higher productivity and lower turnover will result in lower labor cost which is beneficial to us especially since we are trying to stay relevant in all segment we need the lower labor cost for more workers. For product redesign we decided to put two or more products around the rough fine cut of the circle along the outer dashed lines. We thought that by having a product in between two segment would generate more sales. When TQM kicked in we invested money all of TQM initiatives especially since we want to present in all segments. These core competencies will helps us gain competitive advantage because funding awareness and accessibility early gives us the upper hand on customers being aware of our
The strategy for competing in the market was a broad-differentiation strategy. It was broad because it produced a large variety of products such as clamps, inserts, knobs, and similar items. Also, it differentiates from the other metal companies because of its good quality, good delivery, and reasonable price.
The Goal is a book that has an immense support on improvement, which will undoubtedly encourage the Total Quality Management terminology when trying to built up and improve their productivity. However, the Theory of Constraints also plays a very important role in this book, because it guide us to not only focus on the improvements of the business as a whole, but also to focus intensively on the constrains, “ Herbies”, or bottlenecks.
Case Study of The Home Depot Preface This Essentials of Strategic Management assignment has been made by three persons which have been working together and individually to finish the assignment properly and in time. Secondly, we would like to thank the company whose websites we were able to visit and use, to get additional information that we could use for leading the assignment of Home Depot to a successful ending. We can say, that it was a pleasure to work on this assignment and would, in the third place, like to thank each other. The persons who worked on this assignment, for the effort and time that is put in the assignment, that brought us to this finished version.
4 company’s skills and objectives, the customers they were trying to attract, the competitors they
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard business review, 86(1), 25-40.
Byte Products, Inc., headquartered in the midwestern United States, is regarded as one of the largest volume supplier for the production of electronic components used in personal computers. Byte Products, Inc., was a privately owned firm that has now entered to be a publicly traded company. The majority of the stockholders are the initial owners of Byte, when it was still privately owned. The products that Byte produces are primarily found in computers used for business and engineering applications. Byte Products, Inc., has been the leader in this industry for the past six year with consistent yearly revenues of 12% and total sales of approximately $265 million. Byte also has 32% of the market share.
4. What factors do you see as critical to competitive success in the furniture industry?
Signode Industries Inc. - Providing Packaging Solutions Executive Summary SIGNODE INDUSTRY: DILEMMA AT HAND: Mr. Gary Reed, President of Signode Industries packaging division, is in a dilemma as what he should be his course of action to meet the 6.8% increase in price of cold rolled steel- the raw material used in manufacture of Signode’s primary product, steel strapping. There are few options given in the case: Increase Signode’s strapping prices to offset the increased price of cold – rolled steel. Maintain Signode’s current book prices as increasing prices would affect sales force morale. Introduce price-flex model as proposed by Jack Davis i.e. a kind of selective discounting or premium charging for customized services. Recommendations Reason: (All data in accordance to 1983) In accordance to Exhibit 1: Sales of Packaging Division of the company = $285,950 In accordance to Table A: Sales of Apex = 33.3% of $285,950 Sales of BBM = 26.8% of $285,950 Sales of HDM = 33.4% of $285,950 Sales of Customized Products = 6.5% of $285,950 In accordance to Exhibit 4: Similarly, For Apex: As it has a capacity utilization of 71% now, Suppose a sale is $100. Then contribution is $39.15 Therefore variable cost is $60.85. Now if we increase the capacity utilization to 100%, Sales becomes $ 141 since production increases by [(100-71)/71] * 100 = 41% Variable Cost = 141% of 60.85 = $85.8 Fixed Cost = 69.38% * 12.3 = $8.53 Total Cost = 85.8+8.53 = $94.33 EBIT = Sales – Variable cost – Fixed Cost = $46.67 % of EBIT = [(46.67/141) * 100] = 33.09% Suppose the company sales 100x units, the total cost was 69.38. Thus per unit cost was .6938. Now the company sells 141x units, the total cost...
Studies and analyses regarding variations between companies performing higher or lower regarding their marketing practices has helped out to assure that a central textbook marketing strategy principle; which is to achieve success regarding that in the long term the products and services of a firm have to be well ‘positioned’ in the market. This paper aims to highlight the common formulations or ‘anatomies’ for strategies and the isolation of some of the most important inclusions that were thought to be really important in achieving success. Just to bring some “flesh on the bones”, this article examines the method through which theory is translated into practice.
[12] timely2.com/TQM.htm, "timely2.com/TQM.htm," n.d.. [Online]. Available: http://www.timely2.com/TQM.htm. [13] T. F. Prosser, "When and Why Does Total Quality Management Work, and Why Isn't It Still Prevalent," n.d.. [Online]. Available:
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard business review, 25-40.
The key strategies and distinctive competencies that have led the company to success and its present position of a world leader in the Internet sales can be identified as follows.
...lopment industry as well as the strengths and weaknesses within the company. The Business Strategy should reflect the main issues that determine the long-term