Brownie Baker Case Analysis
1. Does The Brownie Baker use a differentiation or a cost leadership strategy? How can you tell?
The Brownie Baker utilizes the low-cost leadership strategy as its primary business operational standard. However, I also believe that a good amount of research and market competitor awareness is implemented into The Brownie Baker’s marketing decision making processes. With the differentiation strategy placing emphasis on uniqueness, I believe The Brownie Baker borrows from this practice to adjust product features to effectively standout from competitor food product lineups on shelves. One of the ways The Brownie Baker accomplishes this effort is through its use of product packaging and design. However,
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Management has come to see this slight differentiation of the norm possibly due to lack of consumer expendable income and dieting after the holidays. This pattern in the normal trend of demand behavior would be considered an irregular variation.
4. What changes have been made in production scheduling and inventory management? Why have these changes been important?
The Brownie Baker has taken advantage of several new technologies and techniques to enhance product consistency and productivity over the recent years. Some of the most critical strategies the company has revamped are in production scheduling and inventory management. The company began this restructure in scheduling by increasing employees and modifying work hours to optimize production output and cleaning maintenance.
Another significant change the company took was to reduce the overproduction of its products. Since The Brownie Baker’s food products have a 21-day shelf life they had to remain frozen in storage until shipment. The company was lumping orders together and baking goods for future distribution; this was keeping money tied up while products waited to be shipped. Instead, the company now prepares its products on a “made to order” basis thus eliminating the holding period between shipments and freeing assets frozen in inventory and storage costs.
Finally, I believe another important change to The Brownie Baker’s production process was the implementation of
Any business, no matter what, is going to fail if the product is not of good quality. You wouldn’t watch a poor quality movie, or eat a meal that wasn’t to your taste. So a business needs to work hard to ensure that their produce is of high quality, and Bakers Delight does so by making their products fresh and in good environments. Through quality food, Bakers Delight has stayed, and remained Australia’s most successful
The plant has the ovens, the vats, the prep areas, and the packaging conveyor belts that will be needed to produce the goods to fulfill the new contracts. This plant will have five times the baking production capacity as the current Cambridge plant. A small fleet of trucks, most with refrigeration units, was also included in the package deal so the new plant will not be contracting with a trucking company to get their goods to customers.
Super Bakery, Inc. was founded in 1990 by Franco Harris, former Pittsburgh Steelers' running back. The company is a supplier of doughnuts enriched with minerals, vitamin, and protein as well other baked commodities to the primary school systems and institutional food market throughout the nation. Since it's a virtual corporation, the core strategic functions of the business are carried out within the company. On the other hand, the other activities of Super Bakery, Inc. are outsourced to a network of external organizations. The business in turn organizes the work flow of and draws together the external companies in this process. This helps the company to add maximum value while making minimal investments in working capital, fixed assets, and permanent staff. The outsourcing to a network of other companies has enabled Super Bakery to increase its sales at average annual rate of 20 percent.
KFF has seen strong success and now must ensure continued growth by expanding services, improving the efficiency of operations, and increasing the consumer purchase cycle (Kudler Fine Foods, 2008). Each member of the organization must play a key role in achieving these objectives. Special attention must be paid to the supply chain and business processes, especially when developing a new product offering.
The purpose of this memo is to offer a recommendation in the restructuring of Interstate Bakeries. This advice has been initiated at the request of company CEO James Elesser so that he can better ascertain which option, filing for bankruptcy or seeking further mergers and acquisitions, would be the best direction to take to counteract flailing profit margins. This is an independent recommendation made from researching the company’s financial history as well as the company’s product portfolio and market segments.
Tim Horton is Canadian multinational restaurant famous for its coffee and doughnuts. Inventory management focuses on directing, planning and controlling the stock which leads to business profitability. Inventory management lowers the cost of their goods sold and increase sales to make the business more profitable. Tim Horton works with three suppliers. Main company is the first supplier. It supplies all the hardware to its branches. Neilson is the second suppliers that supply all the milk products and third is the Sis co that provides 25 types of doughnuts, breads and muffin. Tim Horton uses just in time strategy that increases their efficiency which helps to reduce the unwanted goods that are already present (Kedar, 2014). Tim Horton is committed
When asked how the military has affected how he lives his everyday life, Mr. Baker responded that he has become regimented, he gets up early, and his impulse to train physically remains. By analyzing how he goes about his life, the conclusion that his ordinary world is in Fort MCclellan was made. He went every day by going to classes such as military justice, map reading, weapons, first aid, and basic skills; and then participated in field training. After training, Mr. Baker was assigned to cross the threshold into Germany. In Germany he was assigned to be a Military Policeman, in charge of law enforcement and battlefield circulation, and was placed on a drug suppression team as a military police investigator for misdemeanor. Mr. Baker
The Cheesecake Factory, according to its CEO David Overton, has “broken all the rules” in order to become successful (“2017 Golden Chain Award Winner”). For example, their strategies go far beyond Porter’s understood and standardized theories of low cost versus differentiation (Porter, 1980, 35 and 41). The Cheesecake Factory manages to provide apparently luxurious food to its customers for cheap, thereby both keeping its food low-cost and differentiating their products. Instead of relying on one strategy to become successful, The Cheesecake Factory has the best combination of differentiators: its price and its quality. As a result, The Cheesecake Factory benefits from having the best of both of Porter’s strategies for competitive advantage, thereby conferring upon itself a tremendous marketplace advantage (Hambrick and Fredrickson, 6).
6. Are there any changes you can make in your production plans that will allow you to make better cookies or more cookies in less time or at lower cost? For example, is there a bottleneck operation in your production process that you can expand cheaply? What is the effect of adding another oven? How much would you be willing to pay for an additional oven?
Grupo Industrial Bimbo (Bimbo) has been successful as a baking company for the past several years. With their focus on remaining positioned as just a “baking company,” they have acquired and partnered with several different companies to defragment the industry and expand their product lines and capabilities. This paper will explore the current successful strategies that Bimbo is utilizing, the threats that Bimbo is facing, and finally give some recommendations on moving forward as a company.
Distributors would not stock their inventory with Barilla products that exceed the real demand. Thus, the JITD program would help Barilla’s partners reduce distribution costs and allow them to be more efficient. The project also might help improve Barilla’s relationship with its partners, as Barilla won’t exert pressure on distributors to hold more finished products than necessary. The implementation of the program will eventually improve the planning procedures for Barilla and enable the company to provide exceptional service to its customers at low costs.
Operations management (OM) is critical for the successful output of products and services. At the core of OM are efficiency, quality and cost, which should be administered well to generate efficiency at all levels of production (Kaplan & Norton, 2015). But when a company experiences internal or external challenges that impede the execution of the three fundamentals of OM, then the business may experience adverse effects. This is what was experienced by Whittaker’s Chocolate in 2015 when the company’s sales declined due to a drastic increase in the prices of chocolate that reduced the rate of demand (McConnell & Clayton, 2016). For a company that has established a brand that thrives on economical and quality chocolate, the increase in prices reduced the sales. In addition, the lack of communication with the customers added to situation as the prices had been stable for a while. Although the increase in prices is attributed to a more refined taste – through a supply of expensive ingredients – the company would have still maintained the cost and averted declined sales. This divulges an operational problem to do with supply chain and customer relations. This report analyses the operational failures of Whittaker’s Chocolate and provides recommendations for improvement.
We are also struggling with logistics and general business operations. One issue is that the quantity of inventory we have in stock is 20-30% greater than our competitors’ inventory resulting in fruit and other food items often rotting in storage and needing to be thrown out. H & DH has also experienced numerous recalls including: 6,000 tubs of chocolate due product labeling not listing the correct ingredients, 2,220 packages of cashews because they were packed with other types of nuts, and 66,500 bags of our Expresso Coffee Beans because of labels displaying an inaccurate listing of ingredients. In all cases, the concern is that consumers could suffer serious or life-threatening allergic reactions. Lastly, we are only focus on selling products through our stores rather than using the
Operations: Strived for consistency across the chain, withdiffering results. Refurbishing of restaurants,change in hours may help draw customers.
Kristen and her roommate have decided to embark on a business venture and open an on-demand bakery from their dorm room kitchen. The girls have marketed their cookies as completely customizable with a variety of ingredients, fresh, and available within an hour of submitting the order via email. The cookies are made to order and guaranteed to be warm when picked up. The girls believe the timely turnaround of the cookies and the variety of ingredients offered differentiates them from typical in-store competitors.