Case study — Morning Dew Company Ltd
Morning Dew Company Ltd is a private company that has grown from small beginnings over the past 20 years to become a major supplier of hair-care products to the hairdressing trade. Its products are well liked by professional hairdressers and the company enjoys a dominant share of the market.
Morning Dew has not, until recently, considered supplying their products to the retail market, but enquiries from a major national retail chain has led to the supply of samples and the testing of Morning Dew shampoos amongst the chain’s customers. The outcome of the trial shows that users prefer Morning Dew shampoo over competing products and discussions have now moved to the possibility of Morning Dew becoming a regular supplier. Morning Dew management is attracted to the idea; it would enable them to expand their production and sales without the need to spend money on marketing, or to invest in setting up a new distribution system. Project Management Assignment Help
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It is envisaged that products will be shipped in large quantities to the retailer’s regional distribution centres by a third-party transport company. There is, however, one major drawback: Morning Dew outsources the shampoo bottles from a supplier located 250 kilometers away; the distance as well as the dependency on the supplier’s support also worries them. The quotation from the transport company shows cost associated with the transportation of empty bottles to Morning Dew’s plant and the finished products to the retailer’s distribution centres will be quite high. However, there is a local supplier who could supply the bottles at a lower cost, the issue is Morning Dew has never dealt with this company.
Morning Dew Ltd, is a functional organisation with various departments such as finance, information technology, new product development, production, sales and marketing, human capital management, procurement and warehousing. The management is aware that there is additional capacity and also inefficiency in the organization. Morning Dew believes implementing lean principles for its operations will enable them to ramp up their production and meet the increased demands without overextending prior to stabilisation of the new opportunity. The management is also attracted to Agile approach and would like to implement agile best practice to complement lean implementation in their business functions.
Morning Dew currently employs a very basic quality control system for production and delivery. The company understands that to survive and thrive in a personal care product business, they will have to continuously innovate and improve their products and processes. The company has heard of Seven Quality Tools and other best practices used by larger companies and is interested to invest in a ‘Continuous Improvement’ initiatives to improve their quality management to align with and meet the requirements of the proposed lean processes. Project Management Assignment Help
