Your consultancy company has been called in to improve the performance of the Liftall Company. Your colleague, a junior consultant, visited the company with the Manufacturing Manager and the Information Systems Manager. Unfortunately he was head-hunted by one of the larger consultancies and has now left. He has left you a short report (attached) which gives the main details. Your job is to produce the main text for a report to the company to describe our proposed developments to the manufacturing systems. The executive summary, introduction, etc. will be added later and you should focus only on the following questions, although you should provide references where appropriate.
Your tasks are:
- Company competitive strategy
Identify the company’s competitive priorities and the strategy they are using. Consider how well this strategy is working for them, and offer a new or revised strategy for the future. The new strategy will provide a basis for identifying the most serious problems and issues for urgent action. - Problem assessment
Considering the strategy proposed, assess how well the current operational arrangements (systems and procedures) suit the strategic requirements and estimate the importance of any problems you identify. - Operations direction and proposals
Identify what can be achieved by improving the company’s operations and outline how the crane design and manufacturing operations should be managed in future. Include any relevant areas such as organisation, technology, factory layout, and explain how the operations should work. - Management decisions
Identify the key decisions that will need to be made by the management. Explain which decision-making techniques would be appropriate and how they can be used to help. - Costs and benefits
Estimate the costs and benefits of your proposed course of action. This does not need to be precise but it should convince the managers of the benefits of your proposals based on their current figures. Costs and benefits may be estimated on the basis of the financial information given in the brief (e.g. staff time, turnover, stock level etc) and estimated costs for equipment, consultancy time, etc.
Your manager may be able to clarify some of the details of the com
