Riordan’s Competitive Advantages Essay examples

Barney, J., 1991. Firm Resources and Sustainable Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17 (1), 99-120.

Differentiation strategy is generally reserved for companies with a clear competitive advantage. Companies such as Mercedes and Apple employ this strategy. Differentiation strategy is demonstrated when a company provides value to customers through unique unique features and characteristics of a company's products rather than by the lowest price (Open Learning World 2010).

Riordan’s goals are to reduce costs by 10% and cycle time by 15%. This is increasingly difficult because Riordan has multiple products with varying demands, multiple prices, and capacity requirements. Riordan will use its forecasted sales figures to build a materials and production schedule for 2007 and beyond if needed. This plan must take into consideration existing inventory and resources as well as planned changes. For this plan to be effective, it must be followed closely and clear checkpoints must be defined to provide the flexibility needed to hit cost reduction and cycle time improvement goals.

In order to create a successful business plan, we first conducted a needs analysis and put together a list of recommendations that could be used to help the company. Riordan Manufacturing would like to reduce costs and materials across all plants. The introduction phase involves the evaluation of the current

Cost leadership (Johnson et al., 2013, p194) strategy involves becoming the lowest-cost organisation in a domain of activity. In this case, NiMH battery prices were reduced to remain competitive in the market considering the fact that NiMH batteries represented the Cash Cow of the company.

Riordan Manufacturing has a large problem when it comes to inventory and customer orders. Because Riordan has offices both in the United States and in China, it faces a number of obstacles both in the logistics of inventory control and the need for accurate customer order management.

A cost leadership strategy focuses primarily on “producing products and/or services that are the lowest in the industry” (Turban, Rainer, & Potter, 2003). This type of organization forms business alliances that support their inventory management through computers and computerized purchasing. A differentiation strategy focuses on being unique within the industry and provides high-quality products at a competitive price (Turban, Rainer, & Potter, 2003). These types of companies “provide their customers with a

Despite the fact that cost leadership doesn't generally mean low costs, most cost leadership organizations keep inner costs low with the goal that they can give items and administrations to clients at lower costs and still make a benefit. Furthermore, ConocoPhillips is moving far from production as a business objective. Rather, the organization will concentrate on beneficial comes back from its product,. That implies being more specific in the sort of productions it seeks after. “You can’t afford to tie up a lot of capital for years before earning a return” said Ryan

6. What lessons can we draw from this case about the challenges of pursuing a cost leadership strategy?

Competitive advantage(CA) is an advantage competitors gain by providing or offering customers or consumers greater value for their money through product and service differentiation or through lower prices. Maintaining competitive advantage is crucial to many businesses or organizations' success in order to survive in the market. Competitive advantage is characterized by superior performance which could be an attribute to outperform the competitors whether current or potential; or gaining a higher market share in a particular industry thereby ensuring market leadership; or ultimately, maximization of profit.(JOBBER 2010)

The organizations that endeavour to wind up the least cost makers in an industry can be alluded to as those taking after a low cost procedure. The organization with the least expenses would gain the most elevated benefits in the occasion when the contending items are basically undifferentiated, and offering at a standard business market cost. Organizations taking after this methodology place accentuation on cost diminishment in each action in the value chain. Note that an organization may be a cost pioneer however that does not inexorably infer that the organization 's items would have a low cost. In specific occurrences, the organization can for occasion charge a normal cost while applying the low cost leadership strategy and put the earnings made back into the business

Cost Focus: The cost focus strategy is similar to the cost leadership strategy which sets out to become the low cost producer in its industry except that instead of focusing its product

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).

A successful cost leadership strategy usually provides the entire firm with high efficiency, low overhead, limited perks, intolerance of waste, intensive screening of budget requests, and wide span of control efforts. However, some risks of pursuing this strategy are that competitors might imitate the strategy, thus, driving overall industry profits down; that technology breakthroughs in the industry may make the strategy ineffective; or that buyer’s interest may swing to other differentiating features besides price.

Competitive advantages are conditions that permit an organization or nation to deliver a decent or administration at a lower cost or in a more alluring manner for clients. These conditions permit the gainful element to produce a bigger number of offers or unrivaled edges than its opposition. Competitive advantages are ascribed to an assortment of components, including cost structure, mark, nature of item offerings, dispersion and system, licensed innovation and customer support. Samsung had settled on the choice to receive design as a wellspring of competitive advantage in the 1990s. Prior, the company 's items had been unsatisfying and undifferentiated. In the mid1990s, the Group administrator, Kun-Hee Lee, started Samsung 's change from a low-end OEM into a world-class gadgets organization. Honing the company 's design aptitudes was a critical part of the activity. Be that as it may, this required significant changes in culture, procedures, and frameworks inside the organization. Samsung understood that competitive advantage can be accomplished through the design innovation. Samsung 's voyage toward design greatness began in 1993. That year, Lee supposedly went by a gadgets store in Los Angeles, USA. He saw, sadly, that the Samsung items in plain view looked ugly, while the results of Sony and some different organizations looked a great deal all the more engaging. He discovered too that the business staff at the store were themselves overlooking the Samsung