Operations Management for Competitive Advantage

You are the operations manager of a large manufacturing company that produces widgets. Your widgets currently sell for $100 each. Your current cost to produce these widgets is $80.00 each. You have proposed a series of changes to the operations process that would reduce the cost to produce a widget to $64.00. The marketing manager of your company has proposed a marketing campaign that she believes will increase sales of the widget by 50%. The financial officer of the company has proposed a project which will enable the company to restructure their financing and reduce finance costs by 50%. The Board of Directors is meeting next week to decide which proposal to accept (They are only going to support one of the three proposals).

1. If you were a member of the Board, which of the above proposals would you support ? Please provide your reasoning as to why you would support this proposal.

2. If you were asked to present to the Board the case for making changes to the operations process, what would be your main talking points?

3. Provide a scenario where you would recommend the Marketing proposal.

4. Provide a scenario where you would recommend the Finance proposal.