metro inc was formed in 1947 in verdun, quebec, canada. its initial name was magasins lasalle stores letee. later in the year 1957, it was renamed piceries lasalle groceteria.

it is a supermarket (public company) that rolland jeanneau founded. the supermarket is in various parts of ontario and quebec, having 648 drugstores and 953 grocery stores. there are almost 90,000 employees in this organization, working day in and out. the company during the 1950s was expanding quite rapidly with 50 stores being franchised and having gained fame after an advertisement in la presse for selling a turkey for 39 cents. around the late '50s, the company went on to add more than 23 stores and had a turnover of 10 million. after the mayor of montreal named its transit project the montreal metro. the company named its division metro.

in 1963 the company got renamed metro lasalle after the success of the metro division. later in 1972, it was again changed to metro-ltee. in early 1980, the company was facing huge competition from provigo and going through a patch due to the recession. later it merged with epiciers unis inc and was progressing well, so it got into the montreal stock exchange.

mergers and acquisitions

in 2005 the company reached an agreement with the great atlantic and the pacific tea company and its subsidiary company, a&p luxembourg, to acquire all their shares, around 1.7 billion out of which 1.2 billion were in cash and the rest 500 million in treasury share of metro. the purchase was finalized after going on a bidding war with sobeys. now by this time, 2005, the company had around 573 food stores and 256 pharmacies.

on august 8, 2007, metro announced that they would be investing 200 million in small companies like food stores under the metro banner. companies like a&p, the barn, loeb, and other food companies were converted into a metros name.

current problems faced by metro

metro is facing shortages in labor and inflation, which is causing a problem for the industry.

the shortage of labor, directly and indirectly, affects the functioning and profit margin of the company. the time taken to com-plete a work is getting affected, and there are delays in completing the project. due to the shortage, the workers are being paid slightly higher than what they used to get.

post-covid, the company has seen a surge in online orders for food and groceries, which has left most stores out of function. almost all the consumers prefer to do their groceries online, which is causing a very thin profit margin for metro as there are a lot of competitors in this segment offering various discounts and scheme even though the metro has come up with various offers of delivery which has not helped when it comes to increase in profit margin. the issue of inventory has also been a major challenge for the company.

purpose of the project:

the main purpose of our project is to provide metro inc. with a solution for the supply chain industry to prepare for mid to potential long-term impacts and to overcome resilience, and suggest a solution for overcoming the loss due to the problem of brand shortage which is also known as 'cannibalisation.'

as we know, the cannibalisation is a loss in sales caused by a company's introduction of a new product that displaces one of its own older products. the cannibalization of existing products leads to no increase in the company's market share despite sales growth for the new product.

long-term shortage of the products leads to customers' approach to other brands offering similar services at the same price.

scope of the project:

this project will help metro inc. to build a contingency plan to overcome the analyze the potential disruptions that can hurt their business and devise a plan to minimize such occurrences.

covid-19 has taught the organization that the short-term solutions for crisis-management are just not good enough.

questions:

1. any assumptions that you were required to make

2. briefly describe the structure of your report.