For Prof. MGK Only

· Your company has acquired the cracker business.

· Your company has made the decision to expand into a second soup, 10 oz cans of Chicken Noodle soup.

· Your company now sells their products in China.

· Your Operations/Supply Chain organization has been successful at consolidating your plants and you now have only 4 plants, East Coast US, Central US, West Coast US and China.

· You have been successful at reducing Costs of Goods Sold (COGS) by 5%, but you still have 5% more to accomplish.

· Top line revenues have grown 3% primarily due to our expansion into China, but we still have 7% to accomplish.

Other changes that have taken place over the last 3 years are:

· Your tomato manufacturing lines at your 4 plants have had a production/efficiency problem. They are currently producing only at 90% of their standard production rate, or what they have historically averaged over the past 5 years.

· Quality issues with your tomato soup product are on the rise, surpassing anything you have experienced since their inception.

It is your responsibility to determine how your company will manufacture these new products while at the same time continuing to reduce costs and deal with the quality and production efficiency problems.

There are no formatting requirements. Your assignment is to explain in 3 pages (or less):

1. How you would go about dealing with the changes, new opportunities and issues above

You do not necessarily have to solve the new opportunities and problems, but instead just tell me how you would go about it. Any insight into how you would solve the new opportunities and problems will add positive points to your grade though.

You will be graded on the completeness, accuracy, quality of your response and how well you convince me that you understand the subject matter. There are numerous concepts to take into consideration here and I would not expect anyone to be able to identify all of them, let alone combine them into a 3 page response. So you will be graded on how many of these concepts you are able to identify and utilize correctly within your response.

You can simply email your assignment to me (similar to Assignment #1).

Corporate Strategies Goalsjective

Corporate Goals Goalsjective

Corporate Objective

Corporate Measures Goalsjective

New Product Development Cycle Time

# of M&A’s

Inventory Value

Cost of Goods Sold

Sales Revenues

Sales Revenues in China

New Products as a % of Total Revenues

New Product Development Success Rate

Direct Material Spend

# of Employees

Mfg Production Rates

Investment in Software

Mfg Utilization

# of Mfg Facilities

Grow Gross Margins

by 5%

Grow Top-line Revenues

10%

Reduce Costs

10%

Mergers & Acquisitions

(2 over next 3 yrs)

Expand into New Markets / Geographies (China)

Accelerate Innovation (20% Revenues from New Products)

Consolidate Manufacturing

Facilities

Implement Enabling Technologies

Increase Productivity by 20%