Muenster Pump Case Analysis Essay

We should consider this trade-off from ECCO case, between in-house production and outsourcing when faced with cost uncertainty and competition with a rival manufacturer in a differentiated goods market. When the management decides on selecting organizational forms, technological uncertainty on production activities often ensues. Thus, a manufacturer faces uncertainty when choosing between in-house production and outsourcing. Moreover, because almost all modern firms are in a competitive position, they have to choose organizational forms and take the

* Labor outsourcing is a good strategy to decrease the labor cost. But it associates with many issues. Once outsourcing is done, the MNC cannot just stay behind. The MNC should carefully supervise on the working conditions, safety, wages, working hours, gender discrimination and human rights violations. If any of these factors going wrong and leads to sweatshop conditions, it directly affect on the reputation of the MNC. If once the name or the brand is blacklisted, it is very hard to repair the damage. Therefore, the risk of outsourcing is high.

Outsourced almost 87% of production activities involving spare parts while maintaining core competencies like R&D, design, quality control and key trademark

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.

(1) Synergy creation: The businesses of both companies are famous and highly complementary to each other.

Answer 2. There should have successful partnership with long term commitment and it encourages in investing improvements in supply chain to mutual advantages. Thus, it will build and improve long term commitment with the form of collaborative framework partnership with the involvement of business to business relationship and it will meet the expectations in terms of goals and objectives.

In determining our initial strategy, we knew that we wanted to focus on the product that would be most profitable and key in on features that are important to the customer. Looking at product sales in 2008, the NiMH sold 28.0 M units and the Ultracapacitor sold only 4.3 M units. Based on these sales, the NiMH generated $280.3 M and the Ultracapacitor generated $86.2 M. In addition, when reviewing the Income Statement, the NiMH produced a profitable contribution in the years 2006 through 2008. The Ultracapacitor, on the otherhand, produced an unprofitable contribution during the same timeframe. Based on these figures, we decided to focus on the NiMH.

1. What is the competitive situation faced by Wilkerson? The critical product in term of market competition is the pumps of Wilkerson Company. The pumps are Wilkersons major product line with a production of about 12,500 units per month. Pumps currently have the lowest gross margin among all products, because competitors had been reducing prices on pumps and Wilkerson adopted its prices in order to remain competitive and to maintain the volume. 2. Given some apparent problems with Wilkersons cost system, should executives abandon overhead assignment to products entirely by adopting a contribution margin approach in which manufacturing overhead is treated as a period expense? Our conclusion is, that they should not adopt

Due to a variety of uncertainties ranging from the instability of Mexico’s economy, to a limited knowledge of the possible company to do business with, Charles River Laboratories have to assure to their stakeholders that a joint venture with ALPES is beneficial to the growth of the company.

We are still losing money after the second year. However, my group realized that new tooling was an important cost. Therefore, we start thinking how to reduce it. We find out that if the demand stays between 300,000 to 345,000 units, the supplier will not need new tools. Then, it will bring the cost of new tooling to 0 for the coming years. Let’s take the worst case scenario and try to compute the savings for year 3, if the pistons are outsourced.

The company could also eventually earn a reputation as poor supplier that cannot meet customers’ expectations which would potentially cause the company to lose money and in a worst case scenario, go out of business. Outsourcing an important process could also compromise confidential information, which could lead to the selected vendor using that information to acquire new business; therefore Donna must bind the selected vendor to a contract that prevents the vendor from supplying other customers with that product.

6. What general lessons regarding the management of joint ventures in entrepreneurial settings can you draw from this case?

This case addresses many issues that affect insourcing/outsourcing decisions. A complex and important topic facing businesses today is whether to produce a component, assembly, or service internally (insourcing), or whether to purchase that same component, assembly, or service from an external supplier (outsourcing).

Two locations were found to be appropriate for the plant, first is on Kimberly Street just a few blocks away from the main plant. Second being located in Hampton, which is small town around 180miles from the main plant. The Executives of the company decided that they will eventually require minimum of 75000 Square feet of floor space and 600 labors (300 Skilled, 150 Semi-Skilled, 150 Unskilled) so as to operate efficiently. The estimated cost of the machinery and equipment needed to manufacture the parts is around $2 Million and this requirement was met by the government by equipping them with government owned equipment under a contract.

However, MacDowell Corporation believes that changing the relationship with San Fabian Supply Company will make it benefit more. On one hand, MacDowell has been marketing its products through an exclusive distributor only in the Philippines and the parent company wants to market the products same as in other countries. On the other hand, the demand for construction materials has decreased since the expansion of its plant in the Philippines before. MacDowell Philippines’ plant operating rate was very low, at only about 45% capacity, and the overcapacity plagued the company a lot. To get rid of this situation, MacDowell Philippines wants to increase sales and its new president believes that having more dealers can lead to more sales. So MacDowell wants to change the relationship with San Fabian Company in the