Assignment Brief

In the past four years or so, the Ghanaian economy has experienced appreciable challenges regarding; unavailability and increased cost of energy, high interest rates, reduced consumption pattern, and increased competition in the manufacturing sector, especially, the food and beverage industry. Nevertheless, some firms (both local and international) such as; ABL, Guinness Gh. Ltd, Nestle Gh. Ltd, Despite Group Ltd etc. not only survived the challenges but also experienced growth and expanded manufacturing capacity, as a results of successful introduction of both enhanced and new products. Our world today is increasingly, becoming borderless, with global customers, global suppliers, global manufacturers, and global stockholders and creditors etc. It is not exaggeration that in an industry that is, or is rapidly becoming, global, the riskiest possible posture of manufacturing firms is to remain a domestic competitor. Initiating, continuing, and/or expanding international operations brings advantages to the firm including: gain new customers for their products, increased revenues, and increased profitability. However, global operators also face disadvantages such as: short product life cycle, and correspondingly, reduced cycle time for new product development and introduction, from idea inception to product launch, in high velocity in industries.

Surviving and Growing with NPDI.

The course that you have gone through, Global Engineering Strategy, shows that new product development and introduction positively relates to the operations performance, and ultimately, the competitive position of the firm. Moreover, study reveals that the performance of both enhanced and new products depends, to a large extent, on the manufacturing strategy in terms of effectiveness (create right products) and efficiency (at lowest cost).

Find an academic research paper or case study of a manufacturing firm of your choice with or without global presence that survived the economic situation above, with special emphasis on New Product Development and Introduction (NPDI). The case should describe the firm’s manufacturing strategy to compete in the Local/international market through innovative products offering.

Questions (Answer all Questions)

1. Using tools such as; Product Life Cycle (PLC), Boston Company Group Matrix (BCG) or any other tools you are familiar with, apply a conceptual framework to analyse product stage and make investment decisions in product enhancement or new product development and introduction.                                                                                                        

                                                                                                

 

2. Discuss and analyse the imperatives of New Product Introduction (NPI) and its impact on company performance.                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                   

 

1. Critically appraise the key stages of the product development process, with

Particular emphasis on consideration of its manufacturing strategy.

GUIDELINES/INSTRUCTIONS

1. The answer should not exceed 1500 words
2. Font size 12 (Time New Roman) and 1.5 spacing
3. Do not forget to include a word count & a copy of your chosen case study.
4. Assignment deadline:- 10th August 2023

 

Within the global context critically assess the following major manufacturing decision categories and evaluate its impact on the manufacturing industry.

1. Facility (size, location and focus)
2. Capacity (amount, timing, type)
3. Vertical Integration and Partner management (direction, extent, interface, collaboration)
4. Production Technologies and Processese (equipment, automation,interconnectedness, scale, flexibility)
5. Workforce and Management (wage policies, security, skill levels)
6. Logistics and supply chain (logistics facilities and methods, inventory and policies, vendor coordination, production planning)
7. Organizational and incentives (structure, reporting levels, degree of centralization, role of staff, control and reward systems)
8. Business processes (interfaces and responsibilities, responsibilities, vendor development, monitoring and intervention

GLOBAL ENGINEERING STRATEGY

CASE STUDY (Write 3,000 words)

Strategic management has been widely used by all enterprises to survive aggressive market competition. The strategic planning process is considered objective, logical, systematic approach for making major decisions in an organization (Breene et al. 2007, Brews et al., 2007). It allows effective decisions to be made under conditions of uncertainty. The strategic management process has three stages: strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation (David, 1998). Strategy plan development is the first step and a vital element that companies should have to withstand fierce market competition and to improve its business performance.

A chemical household cleaning company located in Ghana has tried many different management methods during the last 4 years to improve its business performance.

Most manufacturing companies in the sub-saharan Africa are facing aggressive local, regional and international competition. Strategic management process equips the companies with set of capabilities that allow the companies to survive in such environment. Because of this, Ghanaian companies are forced to adopt strategic planning concepts. This will help set its vision, mission, and build strength. In addition, adopting strategic planning will help in resolving their weaknesses, exploiting opportunities, and avoiding threats. The chemical cleaning household industry is experiencing a very competitive era like many others, thus it is curial to find methods to reduce manufacturing costs, improve quality etc. Alaska Company for Chemical Industries started its operations in January 2018. It is located in the Industrial hub of the capital city of Accra. It specializes in the production of household cleaning chemicals such as dishwashing detergents, bleaching liquid, liquid laundry detergent, floor detergents, shampoo, body wash, and hairstyle gel. Currently, they supply their products to the local market.

The main objective of this strategic planning process is to develop a strategic plan for

the Alaska chemical cleaning household company. An effective strategic planning process

is achieved by developing an External Factor Evaluation Matrix (EFEM) and Internal Factor

Evaluation Matrix (IFEM) followed by a Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat (SWOT) and then finally a Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) (Meredith et al., 2009). For

achieving the project’s objectives, the following methodologies were utilized and can be

summarized as follows; setting the mission and vision of the company, perform external

assessment, conduct Porter competitiveness Model, conduct Political-Economical-Social-

Technological (PESTLE) analysis, develop External Factor Evaluation Matrix (EFE), perform. Internal assessment and develop Threats-Opportunities-Weaknesses-Strengths Matrix (TOWS Matrix) and combine it with GSP. Finally, construct Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) to evaluate possible strategies. Riston (2008) pointed out the benefits of external and internal analyses which can be summarized as follows;

• Increase managerial awareness of environmental change
• Improve resources allocation decision
• Facilitating risk management
• Acting as an early warning system
• Focusing attention on primary influences on strategic change

Company Information: The status of the company can be summarized as follows; The company has 24 employees, its market share is around 15% with average profit around 15.5%, it ranks 7 out of 20 among local competitors, it does not have strategic plan vision, mission statement, organization structure, or marketing techniques. It relies on labor –intensive manual processes, it does not have R&D activities, a moderate productivity is estimated with traditional inventory control, it has skilled labors with low turnover. The total sales of the company for the four years are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Total sales and profit during the period 2010-2012

                                        2018 (GHC)  2019 (GHC)  2020(GHC)  2021 (GHC)
Sales                                1,891,840     1,920,785      2,040,896    1,906,725
Cost+ Expenses               1,601,443     1,603,856      1,722,517    1,611,183
Net Profit                         290,397        316,929        318,379       295,542
Net profit as % of sales   15.35%         16.5%           15.6%          15.5%

Case study:

One of the new ventures that Health Buddy Shop is providing prepared food for people who are into keto diet. The management will have its operations meeting sometime next time and it needs to approve its operational expenses which will include the budget for eparing their meal according to the required calaries per person  to attain a particular weight.  Mr. Angelo  has been tasked to handle the operations including the logistics part  which includes  the supplies and raw materials.  Initially, Mr Angelo has come from similar restaurant where ordering on a monthly basis is effective for them in terms of meeting customer requiremnets and meeting the least cost. With this experience, Mr Angelo followed the  same practices from that previous experience and began ordering  food boxes, disposable spoon and fork and paper cups monthly  with a fixed  order quantity of 2,000 pcs per order. Annual demand for the food is also equated to the usage and demand for the said materials which is 24,000 pcs annually.  Food boxes costs  BD 0.150, spoon and fork is BD0.30 while paper cups cost BD 0.20 Maintaing such a volume of materials costs the company BD 5.00 while the cost of ordering from supplier is Bd 12. Mr Angelo wants to ensure that what he will present to the management is correct so he has asked his other friends to  check and validate which in return agreed with his strategy. At its operations meeting, Mr. Angelo intend to declare that the practice is going to save money for the company. However, just before the operations meeting, a trainee named Mr. Rey has come and has been instructed to assess the operations and propose possible improvements that will ensure product quality and at the same  time saving money . Mr . Rey, who is a graduating student of MS Manufacturing  Management saw that there is something wrong with the proposed strategy that Mr. Angelo will implement in terms of order quantity. He objects the practice that is being done when it comes to ordering the food boxes, spoon and for and paper cups.

Answer the following Questions.

1. What is the impact that Mr Angelo’s strategy on the total cost   
2. What is the impact of Rey’s  idea in terms of ordering  inventories. 
3. Having seen the results in Q1 and Q2, what can you conclude to be the best strategy that the company should use? Support your answer with  data