...L.L Bean Case Study 3 1. What item costs and revenues are relevant to the decision of how many units of that item to stock? The two main basic components that are relevant in determining how many units of an item that L.L Bean should stock are the overstock and the under stock. L.L. Bean calculates their overstock by finding the difference of how much the item cost by the liquidation value. L.L. Bean calculates their under stock by finding the difference of the price they are selling the item for by how much the item cost. 2. What information should Scott Sklar have available to help him arrive at a demand forecast for a particular style of men's shirts that is a new catalog item? Sklar needs the data from past demand of similar shirts across all catalogs. Using this past data, Sklar and colleagues could create a standard demand level for those types of shirts. Sklar could conduct market research to its customers by giving them different options of possible future items, including this new shirt, to see what people are willing to buy. 3. How would you address Mark Fasold's concern that the number of items purchased usually exceeds the number forecast? L.L Bean could look at the incentive structure for the managers based on how well the inventory of new items is managed. If managers are given incentives for well-managed new items, it would give them more of a reason to align with the forecasts developed by the buyers. Therefore, this would reduce the probability...
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...1. How does L.L. Bean use past demand data and a specific item forecast to decide how many units of that item to stock? Based on the book forecast and past demand data, L.L. Bean calculates a point forecast for the item in the future period. Then, actual demand / forecast ratio is calculated to forecast the range of inventory of the item. The last step in forecasting demand is finding the service level based on a profit margin calculation. Since L.L. Bean wants to compare the probability of each unit of item bought and the loss generated from liquidating, L.L. Bean calculates a fractile for the items since the fractile calculation indicates what point is optimal to hold the stock in order to balance overstocking and understocking costs, which then determines the number of units to stock. 2. What item costs and revenues are relevant to the decision of how many units of that item to stock? The cost of the item for L.L. Bean and the price at which they can sell the item are the two factors that are relevant in determining how many units of an item should be stocked. L.L. Bean can, then, calculate the profit margin by subtracting item’s costs from the selling price. The profit margin relates to the cost of understocking. Thus, subtracting liquidation value from the original cost of the item gives the loss for failing to sell that item, which also means overstocking an item. Additional cost associated with overstocking is the annual holding time of their facility when they...
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...L.L. Bean Inc. Case Study Situation L.L. Bean, Inc. is an organization that has always experienced rapid growth. The company’s simple focus on customer service, and delivering value has been its business philosophy from the very beginning. This is an evaluation case. Though growth is something all companies strive for, L.L. Bean finds itself in a situation where it wonders how it can keep up with such rapid growth without straying too far from its identity. Questions This situation raises many questions. The protagonist, Leon Gorman raises many questions that are directly related to the situation: 1. How can sales projections be achieved, and how sales growth be achieved while maintaining and enhancing product quality and services? What are we doing well? Where can we improve? 2. Is it possible to develop human resources to meet growth needs? And is the needed at talent available locally in Maine? 3. Is it possible to achieve the productivity levels needed to meet projections? 4. Can the company continue as a family-owned business with growth, given potential estate and management succession problems? 5. Can the company maintain its image, and not change the essential nature of the business? 6. What criteria about our business do consumers like best (and least)? Price? Product? Delivery (place)? Hypothesis After conducting a preliminary review of possible criteria (e.g. from exhibit 4: price, variety, customer service etc.), current practices, and...
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...L. L. Bean Case Study 1. Each catalog for L.L. Bean had a gestation period of about 9 months. Its creation included merchandising, design, product, and inventory specialists. The first step of its creation process is initial conceptualization followed by the preliminary forecasts of total sales. Then forecasts were developed by book. After the layout and pagination of the books, initial commitments to vendors were made. The subsequent step is that item forecasts were repeatedly revised and finally the items were fixed. When catalogs were in the hands of customers, inventory managers decided on additional commitments to vendors, scheduled replenishments, handle backorders, etc. inventories which cannot be sold at that time might be liquidated, marked down and sold through special L.L. Bean promotions, or carried over to the next year. 2. The company determine their actual demand based on historical forecast errors. The historical forecast errors were computed for each item in the previous year and the frequency of these errors. The frequency of past forecast errors was used as a probability distribution for the future errors. For example, in the past year, if there were 50% of the forecast errors for “new” items were between 0.7 and 1.6. Then the company can assumed that the forecast errors for “new” item in the current year also would be between 0.7 and 1.6 with the possibility 50%. If the frozen forecast for an item is 1000 units, we can assume that with the probability...
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...L.L.Bean is the industry leader in providing to its customers, outdoor equipment and apparel. With growing competition and a stagnant economy, the company must continually work to maintain sales, profits, and customer loyalty. L.L.Bean does this by focusing on the competitive forces prevailing throughout the business environment. These forces include new market entreats, the power of the buyer and the supplier, the growing threat of substitute products, and their competition. L.L.Bean’s Competitive Forces L.L.Bean works hard to reduce the threat of new entrants to the marketplace by erecting barriers to entry. L.L.Bean accomplishes this by offering products or services that are difficult to displace in the eyes of customers. L.L.Bean products are recognized around the world for their practical design and high quality. L.L.Bean has built its brand by maintaining customer perceptions of quality and service. The company conducts business with the belief that the brand should reflect the values of L.L.Bean, along with the products it sells (Reed et al., 2009). The company devotes significant time and energy to product research, testing and development. This process includes lab tests, field testers and employee and customer feedback. L.L.Bean operates its own independent test lab for scientific analysis of materials, construction and design. Prototypes for new products are tested, revised and retested in a continuous cycle until they meet customer requirements and L.L...
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...University/Faculty Regulations No plagiarism in report/academic work and writing (MerriamWebster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, USA, 2003) to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own to use (another’s production) without crediting the source to commit literary theft to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source No cheating in examination Grade: E Instructor & Teaching Assistant Puspa I. Sandhyaduhita (p.indahati@cs.ui.ac.id) Build. A Room Nb. 1232 Ika Chandra Hapsari (ikahapsari24@gmail.com) Consultation: With appointment (office hour, weekdays) TA See Scele Introduction to Supply Chain Management Learning Objectives Understand the basic concepts of supply chain Identify the supply chain decision phases and know the significance of each decision phases Understand the goal of a supply chain and the impact of supply chain decisions on the success of the firm What is a Supply Chain? All stages involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer request Includes manufacturers, suppliers, transporters, warehouses, retailers, and customers Within each company, the supply chain includes all functions involved in fulfilling a customer request product development, marketing, operations, distribution, finance, customer service What is a Supply Chain? [2] Includes movement of products from suppliers to manufacturers...
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...mainstay in GE’s efforts to has also been adopted by such divers organizations as General Motors, Home Depot, Frito-Lay, L.L. Bean, Sears, IBM, and the World Bank. The impetus for the Work- Out was the belief by GE’s CEO that the company’s culture was too bureaucratic and slow to respond to change. He wanted to create a vehicle that would effectively engage and empower GE workers. Essentially, Work-Out brings together employees and managers from many different functions and levels within an organization for an informal 3-day meeting to discuss and solve problems that have been identified by employees or senior management. Set into small teams, people are encouraged to challenge prevailing assumptions about “the way we have always done things” and develop recommendations for significant improvements in organizational processes. The Work-Out teams then present their recommendations to a senior manager in a public gathering called a Town Meeting. At the town Meeting, the manager in charge oversees a discussion about the recommendation and then is required to 4 The Institute reserves the right to conduct a separate Viva exam on telephone, as a part of the student's exam in case the Subject Lecturer recommends it in any particular student’s case. make a yes-or-no decision on the spot. Only in unusual circumstances can a recommendation be tabled for further study. Recommendations that are accepted are assigned to managers who have volunteered to carry them out. Typically, a recommendation...
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...Case Study 1 Are Workplace Romances Unethical A large percentage of married individuals first met in the workplace. A 2005 survey reveled that 58 percent of all employees have been in an office romance. Given the amount of time people spend at work, this isn’t terribly surprising. Yet office romances pose sensitive ethical issues for organizations and employees. What rights and responsibilities do organizations have to regulate the romantic lives of their employees? Take the case of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch and Suzy Wetlaufer. The two met while Wetlaufer was interviewing Welch for Harvard Business Review article, and Welch was still married. Once their relationship was out in the open, some accused Wetlaufer of being unethical for refusing to disclose the relationship while working on the article. She eventually left the journal. Other accused Welch of letting his personal life get in the way of the interest of GE and its shareholders. Some even blamed the scandal for a drop in GE stock. Welch and Wetlaufer didn’t even work for the same company. What about when two people work together in the same work unit? Chicago advertising firm, started dating Kevin, one of her account supervisors. Their innocent banter turned into going out for drinks, and then dinner, and soon they were dating. Kevin and Tasha’s bosses were in house competitors. The problem: Sometimes in meetings Kevin would make it seem that Tasha and Kevin were on the same side...
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...found that non family managers tended to regard their families positively; in fact most would like to see the companies continue as family business. Despite the positive attitude, the study identified several problems in the relationships between owners and nonfamily managers. The differences uncover in the study represent imporatant challenges , offering significant opportunities to owner-managers to improve the motivation and performance of their top employees. That is the subject of a number of suggestions and actionable recommendations in this chapter. A Delicate Balance * Balancing the sometimes competing demands of family and business is a challenge for nonfamily managers- “owners have given me much responsibility” – “Now the delicate balance is between performance in what they hired me to do and keeping the chemistry going with the family”. * Key nonfamily managers are expected to keep up to date with professional management practices and be solid contributors in executive, functional and project areas. Staying current is the best antidote to concerns that nepotism may have an influence on career opportunities. The complexity of getting the job done, however, is compounded in a family firm by the need to skillfully manage the relationships with family members. * In the case of family business, nonfamily managers would be well served by behaving as if success requires special attention to tasks, employee relations and relations with family members. The following...
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...Case No. 61 .Epsilon 2011 Name : Kartik Kapoor Roll No. 32 Question 1: Study the incident and prepare a write up in your own words describing the incident with focus on the specific information security failure (Maximum of 150 words). Answer 1: The breach occurred on March 30 ‘2011 at Epsilon, a Texas-based firm that handles email communications for more than 2,500 clients worldwide, including seven of the Fortune 10 companies. Epsilon sends 40 billion emails annually. Epsilon is the largest e-mail marketing company in America. Two and a half thousand companies use its services and entrust their customer e-mails to it. At least 50 companies, including Target, Best Buy, Walgreens and JP Morgan Chase, had their client e-mail addresses stolen So far, 26 companies have come forward as affected by the breach. The first company to report the data breach was the grocery chain Kroger. From there, it quickly spiraled, as a barrage of companies came forward over the weekend to report their email databases had been accessed without permission The list currently includes: TiVo, Barclays Bank of Delaware, McKinsey & Company, Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, New York & Company, Brookstone, L.L. Bean, Ameriprise Financial, The College Board, The Home Shopping Network, Lacoste, Disney Destinations, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, King Soopers, U.S. Bank and City Market. Fortunately for those affected, the stolen email lists included only customers’ names and...
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...Thomas Haug Work Improvement Method School of Professional Studies GBA603 – Organizational Theory Dr. Steven Englehart May 30, 2015 The origins of total quality management are uncertain, however, research has traced the theory of quality control back to the early 1920s when statistical analysis was used in conjunction with quality control. Walter A. Shewhart developed a statistical control chart in 1923 while working at Bell Telephone; although it wasn’t implemented until three years later at plant for Western Electric (Total Quality Management). The actual method of total quality management as a management approach was introduced in the 1950s. Originally the process of TQM utilized the concept specifically dealing with product inspection and production but today it has transformed into a method that can be applied to analyze all of the operations within an organization. The process of total quality management was first established after WWII when Japanese manufacturers started to make civilian goods instead of military equipment (Total Quality). Having a reputation as the country with the most inferior exports, Japan welcomed outside help from American quality experts, specifically W. Edwards Deming. Instead of focusing on the process of product inspection, Japanese manufacturers focused on improving all of the procedures through their workers. The Japanese were able to transform their negative reputation by increasing the quality and decreasing their prices. American...
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...BENCHMARKING AT XEROX Report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Operations Management II Course PGDM Under the Supervision of Ms. Sanjita Jaipuria By Group R To Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management Mayurbhanj Complex, Nongthymmai, Shillong – 793 014 Nov. 2014 TABLE OF CONTENT Topics Page No. List of Figures……………………………………….................................. 5 List of Tables………………………………………................................... 6 Glossary…………………………………………………………..………. 7 Case……………………………………………………………………….. 8 Annexure 1 …………………………………………………….…………. 11 Annexure 2 ……………………………………………………………….. 12 Annexure 3………………………………………………..……………… 14 Annexure 4………………………………………………..……………… 15 Abstract We have used the Xerox methodology for benchmarking, with some slight modifications that place more emphasis on the planning and analysis phases which are thought to be more relevant to the stage of Total Quality Management. Benchmarking is defined as either internal or external, i.e. competitive, generic, or functional, and we can apply the Xerox methodology to both. We found internal benchmarking very useful initially as it enabled familiarization with the benchmarking process throughout the company and encouraged cross functional communication. It also enable people to make their benchmarking errors within the company. The external benchmarking has been mainly competitive and generic. Much of the benchmarking...
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...Zhuhao (Andy) Zhang BUS 340 Marketing Case: L.L.Bean Nov.11th 2014 Question 1: What forms of direct marketing does L.L.Bean employ? Which additional forms of direct marketing should L.L.Bean consider using? L.L.Bean currently employs multiple forms of direct marketing, including catalog marketing and online retailing. Catalog marketing is one of L.L.Bean’s core direct marketing methods. In the United States, catalogs have been a popular way for stores to reach customers for over two hundred years. However, due to the Internet boom in the recent decades, many stores have shifted their advertising budgets from catalogs to online advertisement. L.L.Bean still maintains its well-known catalogs, but has reduced them in size. Instead of making full-line catalogs, L.L.Bean provides more specialized catalogs for different marketing segments to highlights various themes, including road trips, hunting and holidays. L.L.Bean currently manages over 50 specific seasonal catalogs, which are mailed to over 160 countries in the world. In addition to catalogs, L.L.Bean also utilizes online retailing for direct marketing activities to keep up with the growing trend of Internet use. L.L.Bean focuses on multi-channel digital marketing to compete with other brands. The company not only has established a web-based store, but also has developed its mobile shopping app. Online retailing enables customers to get immediate access to L.L.Bean product information and place orders at any...
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...chapter 1 Marketing in a Changing World: Creating Customer Value and Satisfaction ROAD MAP: Previewing the Concepts Fasten your seat belt! You’re about to begin an exciting journey toward learning about marketing. To start you off in the right direction, we’ll first define marketing and its key concepts. Then, you’ll visit the various philosophies that guide marketing management and the challenges marketing faces as we move into the new millennium. The goal of marketing is to create profitable customer relationships by delivering superior value to customers. Understanding these basic concepts, and forming your own ideas about what they really mean to you, will give you a solid foundation for all that follows. After studying this chapter, you should be able to 1. define what marketing is and discuss its core concepts 2. explain the relationships between customer value, satisfaction, and quality 3. define marketing management and understand how marketers manage demand and build profitable customer relationships 4. compare the five marketing management philosophies 5. analyze the major challenges facing marketers heading into the next century Our first stop: Nike. This superb marketer has built one of the world’s most dominant brands. The Nike example shows the importance of — and the difficulties in — building lasting, value-laden customer relationships. Even highly successful Nike can’t rest on past successes. Facing “big-brand backlash,” it must now learn how to be both big...
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...chapter 1 Marketing in a Changing World: Creating Customer Value and Satisfaction ROAD MAP: Previewing the Concepts Fasten your seat belt! You’re about to begin an exciting journey toward learning about marketing. To start you off in the right direction, we’ll first define marketing and its key concepts. Then, you’ll visit the various philosophies that guide marketing management and the challenges marketing faces as we move into the new millennium. The goal of marketing is to create profitable customer relationships by delivering superior value to customers. Understanding these basic concepts, and forming your own ideas about what they really mean to you, will give you a solid foundation for all that follows. ᭤ After studying this chapter, you should be able to 1. define what marketing is and discuss its core concepts 2. explain the relationships between customer value, satisfaction, and quality 3. define marketing management and understand how marketers manage demand and build profitable customer relationships 4. compare the five marketing management philosophies 5. analyze the major challenges facing marketers heading into the next century Our first stop: Nike. This superb marketer has built one of the world’s most dominant brands. The Nike example shows the importance of — and the difficulties in — building lasting, value-laden customer relationships. Even highly successful Nike can’t rest on past successes. Facing “big-brand backlash,” it must now learn...
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