Essay on Strategy for Detroit Plants

Detroit is home to many historical landmarks which have assisted in shaping Detroit into what it is today. One site that has highly impacted Detroit since 1915 was The Russell Industrial Center (RIC). The RIC consists of 7 buildings which take up over 2.2 million acres of land. Throughout the history of the RIC it has aided society by creating an environment everyone in the community is able to be a part of and allows people to come closer together. Originally, the RIC was built as an auto parts manufacturing company, but has evolved over time, allowing the surrounding community to also evolve. Through the ups and the downs the city of Detroit has

Joe Hinrichs, a recent Harvard Business school graduate, was hired in February 1996 to run the General Motors’s the Fredericksburg Torque Converter Clutch (TCC) manufacturing plant. At 29 years old, Hinrichs was GM’s youngest plant manager. Hinrichs was inheriting a poor performing plant that continually underachieved, losing money year after year. Improvements were desperately needed to increase the efficiency of the manufacturing process and reduce operating costs. GM had considered shutting down the plant; however, when a new bonding process, using carbon fiber, for the TCC was approved in 1995, GM instead invested thirty million dollars into the Fredericksburg plant to incorporate the new process.

In April 2000, Ford Motor Co. announced a shareholder Value Enhancement Plan (VEP) to significantly recapitalize the firm's ownership structure. Ford had accumulated $23 billion in cash reserves and under the VEP would return as much as $10 billion of this cash to shareholders. In exchange for each share currently held, the plan would give stockholders one new share plus the choice of receiving $20 in either cash or additional new Ford common shares. Shareholders electing to receive cash would be taxed on these distributions at capital gain rates. Among other things, the plan provided a means for the Ford family to obtain liquidity without having to dilute their 40% voting interest (even though they own

The change in the competitive environment greatly influenced JDCW. The early 70s were the end of the post WWII boom period, during which time JDCW was expanding its operations and operating many of its manufacturing plants at capacity. However, there were multiple economic factors in the early 80s that negatively affected the demand for JDCW products. The effect of these economic factors is evidenced in the case study by the fact that during the 1970s

Littlefield Technologies (LT) has developed another DSS product. The new product is manufactured using the same process as the product in the assignment “Capacity Management at Littlefield Technologies” — neither the process sequence nor the process time distributions at each tool have changed. The LT factory began production by investing most of its cash into capacity and inventory. Specifically, on day 0, the factory began operations with three stuffers, two testers, and one tuner, and a raw materials inventory of 9600 kits. This left the factory with zero cash on hand. Customer demand

Don Logan felt that all of these factors played a role in not presenting a true measure of how each product line and each product manager was doing within Lipton. We tend to agree that the current process is not accurately reflecting how

Future managers of Chester should continue plant improvements and labor initiatives, while focusing on product segments with the highest contribution margins. Management needs to develop accurate forecasting techniques to avoid the inventory swings seen in the first five years, and the inventory stock outs that occurred for at least one product every year. Future success will depend on leveraging the core competencies of Chester and

1. What is the competitive situation faced by Wilkerson? The critical product in term of market competition is the pumps of Wilkerson Company. The pumps are Wilkersons major product line with a production of about 12,500 units per month. Pumps currently have the lowest gross margin among all products, because competitors had been reducing prices on pumps and Wilkerson adopted its prices in order to remain competitive and to maintain the volume. 2. Given some apparent problems with Wilkersons cost system, should executives abandon overhead assignment to products entirely by adopting a contribution margin approach in which manufacturing overhead is treated as a period expense? Our conclusion is, that they should not adopt

Wriston’s Detroit plant is no longer a viable operation due to long-term capital underinvestment and product-process mismatch. It is recommended that the plant be phased out of operations over a five-year period with production and staff gradually shifted to a new plant to be built in the Detroit area. Further, it is also recommended that division accounting procedures and evaluation mechanisms be modified to allocate revenues/costs allowing for the synergistic benefits of Detroit’s products, and to recognize inherent manufacturing complexities, respectively. Issues Detroit’s production is unique when compared to other Wriston plants. Runs are typically lowvolume, involve significant set-up time, and vary significantly due to the sheer

Being able to increase productivity and revenues has always been the greatest challenge of any manager, and the manager of RL Wolfe, a plastic pipe manufacturer, was not an exception. Because of the low-efficiency percentage RL Wolfe had in comparison to their its competitors, John Amasi, director of Production and Engineering , had no other choice then came up with a new way of improving RL Wolfe production methods.

Midwest Copper Mining’s (MCM) biggest problem they are facing is that of sustaining supportable profit growth, as the undercurrents of the copper mining industry are changing. In particular, they need to figure out how they are going to increase their capacity to meet demands globally. They also need to figure out how to do this without disrupting the current culture of the business. They have been very successful and have created process and procedures that have kept them sustainable over the years. With the changing of the copper industry, MCM needs to re-evaluate their business strategy, make changes as necessary, in order to continue to be a successful company that is both a cost-leader and a differentiator.

Recommendation: The Detroit plant is an inefficient factory and ought to be closed as soon as possible. Products should be transferred to other plants for benefits in both operational and financial gain.

The Portland Plant will continue to produce non-compliant product until a time when a deficiency in the finished product is discovered. We can therefore assume that quality is not monitored during the production phase. According to Slack et al. (2013) " ... [when] quality levels or times are significantly different from those planned, then some kind of intervention is almost certainly likely to be required" (p. 511). An emphasis on flexibility over speed that values quality control and empowers employees to stop production when anomolies are discovered will ultimately improve Portland's production times. Conclusion The Portland Plant needs to re-order their objectives (from most to least important) as follows: (1) Quality, (2) Flexibility, (3) Dependability, (4) Cost, (5) Speed. (See Polar Representation of Performance Objectives in Appendix A.) This change will emphasize a superior finished product and the ability of the plant to adapt to market changes. Improvements in quality will influence their consumers’ decision to return, reduce costs due to mistakes at each process of production, and improve the dependability of operations (Slack et al., 2013, pp. 46-47). Flexibility will assure that Portland is able to adapt to market changes and assure their ability to customize operations to match products that their buyers are developing. According to Slack et al. (2013), flexibility within an operation increases speed, saves time, and maintains dependability of

The Dow Chemical Company is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world in terms of revenue and in terms of market capitalization; it is the third largest in the world (as of 20071). There was a steady growth of the market from the year 2002. But before that the company faced a back drop in the profit margin. The company realized its growth in 2002 only after merging with Union Carbi as the company’s sells rose to $27.8 billion. Back in 1998, the company faced the real down turn of the sale to $18.4 billion. Then, for 4 years continuously, the company managed to keep the sales around $20 billion. In the year 2000, the company planned to adopt a

This analysis delves into the company’s operation management principles to interpret its successful strategies and offer future recommendations.