KUPI BUSINESS

Founded in 2005, KUPI is a start - up company in the high - tech manufacturing industry that provides a variety of build - to - order products. Because of the industry nature, new products are constantly being updated, and the slow movers usually get left behind. While other companies in the same market are struggling with the economic downturns, KUPI Business surprisingly grows fast. This is thanks to the management team, whose vision it is to encourage and cultivate new ideas for business and process improvements. One important factor contributing to the company's rapid growth is the organizational strategy, which directs the company to seize market opportunities whenever possible. Fast delivery is one of the company promises. This strategy works fairly well. In fact, a little too well because the company has grown unexpectedly too fast.

Recently, demands for KUPI products have risen over 150 percent. Although this is a good news, the company's capabilities can't keep up with the rising demands, especially at peak periods. In attempting to deal with the growing demands, the company has created several more requisitions for customer service to take care of all new orders and customer relations. However, challenges in integrating various works among different functions are still overwhelming. That is because KUPI's build - to - order products require intensive assembling processes, which involve a number of people from electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, test engineering, and manufacturing, just to name a few. Each function possesses different specialties needed to carry the products to the final assemblies. At the moment, the work for each customer account is pretty much in sequence, following one silo to the next until the product is ready (see Figure 13.1)

Figure 13.1 The Company's Current Work Structure Request Product Function A Function B Function C OOO