Case 1: Columbia Industries

In 1976, Deere & Company was among the world’s leaders of farm and industrial equipment. The majority of Deere’s success was attributed to the light crawler tractor market with over 50% market share. It was at that time Deere earned a reputation for manufacturing reliable small tractor equipment. Deere evolved into producing and manufacturing the larger industrial equipment in phases, beginning in small forestry operations. As farmers and smaller operators sought to diversify their businesses, Deere offered newly innovative attachments and crawlers, and was now seeking to integrate into the large tractor market in phase five. In this phase, Deere introduced the JD750 bulldozer, a heavy contracting

1. What recommendations would you make to John Wolf with respect to structuring the supplier relationship process for the Wolf Motors dealership network?

3. What strategic alternatives would you suggest IKEA employ to further penetrate the U.S. market?

MTC initially needed to obtain substantial investment capital due to two main factors: a research-heavy industry, and the need to create most of the markets for its products. Although the founders' goal was to become a major manufacturing company, they did estimate that the company would need $50 million in capital before it would become self-sufficient. Their initial financing model was to first recruit a superior technical team, use that to attract additional equity investment and development funding from interested corporations, and then develop manufacturing capabilities. Commercial sales began 2.5 years after inception, and MTC is nearing the break-even point in 1990.

He is in charge of four departments, each headed up by a senior manager. These departments are distribution, trade marketing, market research, and sales. The sales department, which has 1400 employees, is further divided into urban sales and rural sales, and there are 13 rural sales managers reporting to the head of rural sales. Each sales representative serves a territory that usually consists of both licensed and non-licensed establishments. They supply retailers with product information and storefront displays. They also offer discounts and promotions, where appropriate, in an attempt to win limited retailer shelf space. A partial organization chart is shown in Exhibit A.

Wilkerson’s competitors have cut prices on their pumps, in order to maintain market share, Wilkerson also cut the price of their pumps. This dropped Wilkerson’s GM by about 15%. At the same time, Wilkerson was able to increase the price of their flow controllers by 10% without a drop in demand.

Roger Berg, the Vice President for Planning of the Lake Corporation, had to recommend a subcontractor for the environmental study project in connection with their planned large resort.  The contract has been decided in principle to be awarded to Ceil Grant, one of their regular subcontractors. However, after a lunch conversation with Del, who represented a larger contractor firm, Roger changed his mind, now recommending Del’s company to take on the project instead. Faced with a situation of moral dilemma, he has to decide what would be the right thing to do.

Align customer’s needs with business, develop forecast, set price polices for each product segment, and monitor promotions and sales budget.

Omni Automated Systems has over 40 years of experience in manufacturing state of the art electronic assembly equipment. The company sells equipment to electronics manufacturers. Bob Waters is a field sales engineer working for Omni and he has received news that he has lost a sale with Gentech Office Equipment Company. Gentech manufactures a variety of office equipment. They have recently fallen behind in the industry and have experienced market share and profit margin erosion. In order to turn this around they are looking to revamp, modernize, and automate its manufacturing facilities. They will need a new soldering line to automate their manufacturing and are looking to purchase a robotic test cell. Steve Anderson is the purchasing agent

2.     Given the markets the company is operating in, what is the best structure for the sales force? How did you decide?

(If the company produce the BB first, the company will buy 4000 labor hours, and it will use 2500 for BB and the remaining hours to produce WRM = 1500.

This section will focus on customers’ needs, identifying collaborators and their strategic goals and identifying the competition that provides similar products.

Ted received a call from his boss, Townsend “Sandy” Beech, the head of his four-person deal team and founding member of the firm. Sandy requested Tad, on a Friday afternoon, to review three presentations for possible buyout targets. Tad was to make a presentation at the partners’ meeting on Monday morning, recommending only one (1) investment and detailing the strengths and weaknesses of all three.

To answer those questions, I will perform an evaluation on the corporate-owned store control system from budgeting, performance evaluation, incentives, and transfer pricing perspectives. Part King is a decentralized organization. Every corporate-owned store is a profit center. The stores buy auto parts from Part King and then sell them to the two segmentations: hobbyists and commercial customers. Profit is the difference between revenue and cost. Thus, profit center managers are evaluated in terms of

How can Harley Davidson marketing and sales, personnel interact with its purchasing personnel to further strengthen the supply chain and improve customer loyalty?