Frozen Food Case Study

Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Answer 1: Supply Network Prospective 4
Failure to integrate the facilities 5
Vertical integration 5
Horizontal Integration: Single Company Strategy 6
Benefits: 7
Product range 7
Lack of customer consciousness and commitment to service 7
Poor internal and external communications 8
Answer 2: Customer service 9
The components of customer service 9
Answer 3: Inventory Management 11
The poor solution – the economic order quantity (EOQ) ‘fix’ 12
ABC analysis 13
Material Requirement Planning (MRP) 13
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) 14
Just-in-time management 14
Kanban 15
The effect of JIT on operations 16
Answer 4: Operations Performance Objectives 17
Quality 17
Speed 18
Dependability 19
Flexibility 20
Cost 21
References: 22



Introduction
United Biscuits is a leading European manufacturer of biscuits and bagged snacks. It has 14 geographical locations in the UK with revenue of £1.1 billion in 2007.
No of employees:
7,200 people in the UK
Business Sector:
Food manufacturing
IT was founded in 1948 following the merger of two Scottish family businesses — McVitie & Price and MacFarlane Lang. In 1960, United Biscuits added to its portfolio with the acquisition of Crawford's Biscuits and MacDonald's Biscuits. In 2000 UB was bought by Finalrealm, a consortium of investors, and reverted to private limited company status.
United Biscuits (UB) is one of the world’s pre-eminent branded snacks businesses. They produce some of the best known and loved sweet and savoury snacks, with products ranging from biscuits and crackers to cakes and savoury snacks. Their unrivalled portfolio of brands has been meeting consumer needs for well over 100 years and includes such favourites as McVitie’s, Jacob’s, Carr’s, McCoy’s, Hula Hoops, McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes, KP, Mini Cheddars, go ahead!, Verkade, Sultana, BN, and Delacre.   UB holds leading or strong number two positions in its core markets of the United Kingdom, the... [continues]

Read full essay