Work on Case Studies
3. What operational changes would you recommend to Wally to improve performance?
In order for an organization to reach its full potential, survive in a challenging economy or highly competitive environment, it must improve across multiple dimensions.
Among those are:
Product Development
Business Intelligence, Marketing and Public Relations
Sales Force Set-up and Management
Supply Chain and Manufacturing
Business Process Redesign
Analyzing Obermeyers’ planning and operations process, there a number of recommendations that we can make to Wally in order to improve the production performance and overall outcome.
a. Improve the demand forecasts made internally by the Buying Committee in November just before Speculative Production. As we can see in Exhibit 10, instead of using just a simple average of the individual forecasts made by Laura, Carolyn, Greg, Wendy, Tom, & Wally, use a weighted average, with the weights reflecting past accuracy.
a. Obtain market feedback earlier than Las Vegas, thereby converting some Speculative Production to Reactive Production. Sport Obermeyer can invite selected retailers to come in January to Aspen for an all-expenses-paid “Early Order Weekend”, where there is time for a “sneak preview” of the new line, some recreational skiing and socializing, and then the early placement of orders at a discount. To maximize the value of the market feedback, Sport Obermeyers’ “guest list” should include both large and small retailers and both urban and resort retailers.
b. Decrease lead times for both raw materials and finished goods, thereby allowing more time to utilize existing capacity. Since the business strategy should emphasize Dependability more than Cost, lead-times can be reduced using some or all of the following methods:
-Choose suppliers of raw materials more on the basis of D than C.
-Expedite orders through information sharing with suppliers.
-Expedite shipments using faster (but more expensive) shippers.
In order for an organization to reach its full potential, survive in a challenging economy or highly competitive environment, it must improve across multiple dimensions.
Among those are:
Product Development
Business Intelligence, Marketing and Public Relations
Sales Force Set-up and Management
Supply Chain and Manufacturing
Business Process Redesign
Analyzing Obermeyers’ planning and operations process, there a number of recommendations that we can make to Wally in order to improve the production performance and overall outcome.
a. Improve the demand forecasts made internally by the Buying Committee in November just before Speculative Production. As we can see in Exhibit 10, instead of using just a simple average of the individual forecasts made by Laura, Carolyn, Greg, Wendy, Tom, & Wally, use a weighted average, with the weights reflecting past accuracy.
a. Obtain market feedback earlier than Las Vegas, thereby converting some Speculative Production to Reactive Production. Sport Obermeyer can invite selected retailers to come in January to Aspen for an all-expenses-paid “Early Order Weekend”, where there is time for a “sneak preview” of the new line, some recreational skiing and socializing, and then the early placement of orders at a discount. To maximize the value of the market feedback, Sport Obermeyers’ “guest list” should include both large and small retailers and both urban and resort retailers.
b. Decrease lead times for both raw materials and finished goods, thereby allowing more time to utilize existing capacity. Since the business strategy should emphasize Dependability more than Cost, lead-times can be reduced using some or all of the following methods:
-Choose suppliers of raw materials more on the basis of D than C.
-Expedite orders through information sharing with suppliers.
-Expedite shipments using faster (but more expensive) shippers.