Chaparral Steel differentiates itself from other minimills because of the various activities at which they excel and the relationship among these activities. Four central and interplaying activity themes were clear in the Chaparral Steel case and will be used to build our first framework. Before modeling the framework-related contributions of the Chaparral Steel case, we want to establish a baseline for our framework. The building blocks or foundation of the framework will be based on what we believe is a "framework tautology": all companies share a fundamental framework that consists of allocating resource to acquire inputs and adding value to them to produce an output, which will be purchased by one or more companies. Using this …show more content…
(Exhibit 1 framework)
Leadership Facilitates the Rapid Translation of Technology into Product Referring to our framework, we clearly give credit to Chaparral Steel's leadership for having the valuable ability to quickly apply technological innovations to new products or processes that make product creation simpler and cheaper. Executive sponsorship of research and development initiatives must exist on many levels if it is to be useful, and Chaparral Steel's leadership was clearly committed to technology. They devoted funds over prolonged periods of time and tolerated a larger amount of failure than most steel companies would ever have considered acceptable. This higher tolerance for risk is understandable given the founders' mindset to break all the rules of big steel, adopt a flat organizational structure, decentralize decision making, treat everyone as a salesperson, share profits with all employees, and encourage creativity. The culmination of these values spread throughout the company and created a unique culture, unlike any other in the industry. Chaparral Steel's employees thrived in this environment and learned that ambiguity and change really meant opportunity. Problem solving became a cross-functional collaborative effort; when something broke, many ran to fix it, instead of finger pointing or
The second Industrial Revolution was an era that created many inventions off of the first Industrial Revolution, which included refining techniques to chemicals, electricity, transportation, and production engineering to name a few. One of the most highly technological innovations of the second Industrial Revolution, however, was the innovation of steel.
Harvard Business Review case, The Nuclear Tube Assembly Room, is an excellent example of how managing and leading a team effectively can make a substantial difference in terms of results and goals achieved, all the while creating new ambitious expectations for workers. This particular case revolves around Ralph Langley, general foreman of the process department at American Radiotronics Corporation. Within the first 24 months of being promoted to general foreman, Langley has swiftly changed the mentality and efficiency of the workers in the nuclear tube assembly room. He has changed their terrible reputation into one of the most
Caterpillar’s main industry of machinery has many barriers to entry which makes it difficult for new organisations to enter the market. It is a mature and highly competitive industry with few dominant competitors who have cemented their position over the decades. Furthermore, these corporations have sustained a competitive advantage over any new entrant that tries to enter into the industry.
3. Please apply Porter’s Five Forces model to the steel industry. While doing so, clearly identify who is behind each force – for instance Suppliers, Buyers, Substitutes, Competitors, etc. And what is the impact of each force on the profitability of the industry – in terms of the following levels - High/Medium/Low. At the end, also provide a summary of all the five forces and propose whether you think the steel industry is attractive industry or not an attractive industry.
Steel, and J.P. Morgan came onto the scene at this time. These corporations and all they brought
Product Innovation – Innovation of new products had failed many times and MTI has lost reputation with Wall Street. This process had been placed on the backburner and when the CEO came on board there were only six products in the pipeline. Therefore, to be successful in the future, MTI needs to invest more in R&D and focus on delivering new products.
firms It has been suggested that the disappointing performance of U.S. firms during the 1980s in technology-intensive, global markets was from failure to improve upon products and processes. It has been cited that "the U.S. makes the breakthroughs, while other countries, especially Japan, provide the follow-through." Revolutionary innovation has been contrasted with less dramatic advancements. Incremental improvement can turn products over and get more, newer models out. This may all sound dull, but the achievements can be exhilarating. American firms may have failed to follow up on their breakthroughs with such continuous improvements. Where there were successes, they were built upon a combination of breakthroughs and incremental improvements. It is the subject of yet another discourse as to what constitutes an innovation: a breakthrough or an incremental improvement, or both, and/or everything in between. 4. To take advantage of opportunity It is no surprise that surprises, often disappointing surprises, are the seeds of innovation. Take the oil companies. It is no surprise that some oil companies are becoming oil-andgas companies. Why? Because gas is found more often and in greater abundance than oil
This report discusses the challenges that The Nucor Corporation faces during this era of social and economic climate change. Using Porter's Five Forces Analysis and Four Generic Strategies, we will assess the steel industry standards as it relates to the strategies implemented by the Nucor Corporation. We will also assess what Nucor’s strengths and weaknesses are, and if they will be able to continue
We have all heard this joke. Only now the horse has been replaced with consumers of steel in the US steel industry. Why? Many companies in our economy that use steel as an input to produce their goods are staggering due to recent extraordinarily high steel prices. President Bush dropped a tariff on imported steel on Thursday March 4th; according to basic economics, this cancellation of the steel import tariff should have dropped the price for US domestic consumers. Unfortunately though, that hasn't happened. Steel prices are currently at record highs and many forecast even higher prices to come. This puts huge pressure on small businesses that are dependent on steel for their well being. With higher prices
At the moment the organization contains more than 50 thousand people who are working at 150 enterprises worldwide, with 8 billion dollars of annual turnover. The fact is that, the majority who heard about the Ingersoll-Rand company considers that this company is a manufacturer of the equipment for the mining industry and construction, although this firm is also the world's largest supplier of advanced technologies with the famous trademarks which is taking the leading positions on the market of the industrial equipment.(Ingersoll Rand, 2016)
For over half a century the Pittsburgh region was the largest concentration of steel making in the world. Its collapse was spectacular. The mill towns strung along the Monongahela Valley have now suffered forty years of decline. Much of their shabby infrastructure and buildings (at best homely even in their prime) has decayed, most of their population has fled to the metropolitan suburbs or left the region, and those that remain, for the most part poor, struggle or live off memories. Regeneration is a continuing problem for public policy makers as the mill towns struggle on life-support systems — public welfare for individual households; funding from federal, state and local agencies for public services, projects and a plethora of
Jim Collins and his research team of 20 compared and contrasted how many companies made the leap to greatness and how other companies didn’t. Based on bundles of evidence and a large quantity of data, he and his team uncovered how
The strength of the unit is based on the fact that the company is built on an innovative and entrepreneurial culture with a decentralized management philosophy with Knowledge sharing and dissemination as a key part of Art’s business philosophy. Despite the high level of decentralization and profit accountability, technology and human capital were both widely shared among divisions. The company also moved quickly to bring products to market. An idea which showed promise was funded as funds were always available for small beta batch productions. This allowed market testing to achieve proof of concept within ART. Investment funds were readily available to fund an investment once an innovation has been approved.
The vision of Cooper Industries, as stated in the case, was to do an ‘outstanding job at the unglamorous part by making necessary products of exceptional quality.’ The goal was to operate in industries that had become somewhat of a necessity for consumers. Examples of such industries include: power transmission, hand tools, drilling and others. Cooper industries had started in 1833, as an iron foundry, and had existed most of its 150 years as a small sized maker of engines and compressors. However, all this changed in the 1960s, when the management decided to expand the company to lessen its dependence on the capital expenditures of the cyclical natural gas business.
Codman & Shurtleff is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson which supplied hospitals and surgeons worldwide with over 2,700 products for surgery. Codman is now facing a profit shortfall of two million. A series of actions was decided in order to recover the shortfall, while the decisions made were somehow not aligned with J&J’s group philosophy. Codman managers decided to cut budgets of R&D expenditure which might have negative effects on the long term performance of the firm. The management of Codman ought to choose a better way that has a positive effect on operations in the long run and use a formal process, “stage gate”, in new product development.