Slade Plating Department
Introduction
The Slade Company was a small but prosperous manufacturer of metal products designed for industrial application. It was located in central Michigan with 500 employees. The plating department of Slade had formed certain informal team in which some employees had dishonest behaviors. In this paper, we will discuss Slade’s external environment, central problem, alternatives, analysis, and finally give some recommendation.
External Environment
Competitive Market
Slade’s competitive market is metal product market. It can be analyzed with the Porter’s Five Forces Model: risk of entry by potential competitors, rivalry among established companies, the bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, and threat of substitute products. Appendix 1 shows a summary of the five forces. The risk of entry by potential competitors is high. The capital requirement of small metal companies is not high, so building and establishing this kind of company doesn’t need a lot of resources. Also, Brand loyal of the current existence customers is not very strong thus new entrants are able to compete to enter the market.
Also, the competition between existing players in this industry is high. There are about 619,000 metal enterprises in the USA in 2005 (IBISWorld, 2007).There are many companies that produce different kinds of metal products in the market. Besides, the bargaining power of buyers is high because product difference for the buyers of the metal products is small. It is not easy to differentiate the quality of one metal product from another. In addition, the cost of switching for the buyers is low. The number of substitutes of metal products is also high thus the buyers have great bargaining power.
In addition, the bargaining power of the sources of inputs is high. The switching costs from one supplier to another are high because there are not many substitutes for the particular input for metal...
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