Question 1) • Fortis has been facing strong competition: Since 2002, Fortis has been losing nearly 2% per year of the steel strapping market (in 2002 50% and 2008 40%). • Furthermore Fortis is confronted with significant erosion of prices: Other competitors initiated price war and Fortis refused to continuously cut its price. This also led to the fact that Fortis loosed market share to its competitors. • These effects are coupled with the overall declining health of the industrial economy and the fact that Fortis as well as its competitors are closely tied to this. (Overall decline of market / demand) and the increasing price sensitive of customers.
Formal Report From: Date: To: Ref: Budget 1.0 Introduction This report will include information on how there have been problems with the budget and the recommendations I can make to improve the situation. 2.0 Problems 2.1 The budget has been exceeded in some areas. This has meant that we have had to cut money in other areas as a result. This has been an on-going problem, with the budget department becoming slack and not doing as deep research and up to date costing. 2.2 The budget has not been accurate enough.
GES sales department and Customers are dissatisfied with the current processing time for loan applications by GF. Problem statement & Objective GF Loan application processing and is sub optimal with its inefficient resources utilization and is unable to commit to meet GEC’s objective of promising its customers “10 business days or less” processing time for loan approval. The objective of this case study is to analyze and recommend optimal loan approval process for GF analyzing capacity and bottlenecks in the system. Case Analysis and recommendations Current Model The above table summarizes the Average waiting time in the system (Ws*) based on the current model of processing the applications for each region. The applications processed in different regions take processing times in the system ranging from 15.29 to 37.23 days.
Risk Factors of Bloomingdales Risk factors play a major role in today’s economy. Since we are stuck in the stagnation period and do not seem to be recovering for quite some time, businesses have to come up with a proper marketing plan that will help sell their products. All businesses suffer from the same risk factors. Some common risk factors include: product quality, price, brand loyalty, competition, managerial skills, etc. Many customers are shopping at lower priced stores because the economy is not allowing them to spend extra money.
This in turn further delayed the implementation of their regional and centralized inventory management system delay by ten months. Now Captiva is faced with inconsistency in their standards for operating, and their regional and centralized management system is performing poorly. This includes having major discrepancies within their inventory management system. Captiva Conglomerate has gone over budget for an operating platform that is more of nightmare than a help to its business. Lastly, the contract was written in a manner where if would be very difficult for Captiva to sue SOS.
However, the SPH program put a lot of pressure on store managers and sales. Consequently, a large group of the R&R associates sued it for “working off the clock” in 2010. This lawsuit might cause reputation damage, and the settlement could be up to $200 million. In 2008-2009 before the case, there was an economic recession. The whole luxury goods industry in the U.S. dropped over 14%, and R&R revenues declined 10%.
Weaknesses * Customer Service, in a poll conducted in 2010 1/3 of Best Buy customers left unsatisfied. * Very vulnerable as a stand-alone electronics vendor. * Have high overhead costs from maintaining stores and employees. Opportunities * Expansion into other countries. * Expansion into other products other than electronics.
In the case there is a lot of evidence which indicates that management is not effectively motivating their employees and this is leading to a decline in productivity and profitability. One reason would be management is not giving employees proper incentives to raise their productivity levels and they are using a financial incentive plan with major flaws in its design (Scanlon Plan). Another reason would be the decline in suggestions that are submitted, at the programs height 305 suggestions were submitted. Now it has dropped to 50 a year showing that employees no longer feel like they are contributing successfully to the plant success. This is a major issue because feedback is an essential part of motivating a person and making them feel valued in the company.
Recently growth has been restricted, due in part to recent fines from state and government agencies for poorly kept records for both clients and employees. Recently APremium has not been able to respond to the staffing demands of the newer clients in remote regions, their employee lists have become overwhelming and very difficult to filter through in time to be useful in responding to staffing deficiencies on short notice. The field staff has been complaining that payroll is always late and many of the skilled laborers are threatening to leave. APremium is seeking another contract with a very delicate group of clients who require premium care and attention to code. This contract can increase their business by 75%.
The transition was not smooth and plagued with increasingly long production delays. Because of these delays, customers were irritated and dissatisfied with Engstrom. Engstrom had to come up with a plan to turn this condition around. The Engstrom plant had to focus on cost savings, which meant producing more per hour of labor spent. The Engstrom incentive plan therefore, focused mostly on extrinsic motivation (Beer & Collins, 2008).