Quality$-$Productivity

If your name is not on the Cover Page you will not get the mark for this assignment.

Case Study $$ Supreme Inc.

You have just joined the Supreme Company as a financial analyst, reporting to the Controller. Based upon your recent business education at Humber, which included a wide range of subject areas, your new boss has asked you to help her review the recent changes in the manufacturing area.

Until recently, the company had offered only a limited number of standard electric motors for sale. They had purchased raw materials and the lowest level components, but produced most of the subassemblies and all of the finished products in their own plant. The company$$s profitability had declined over the years and marketing believed that customers needed both more variety of product and lower prices. In early $2022,$ the manufacturing division had been assigned the task of recommending changes to accomplish this dual goal of increasing variety and reducing costs.

Manufacturing had recommended that they change their strategy to:

$$ Buy $($rather than make in$-$house$)$ most of the subassemblies.

As tooling$-$up to produce a much wider variety of subassemblies, would take several million dollars of investment and $2-3$ years to implement. Retaining production of existing sub$-$assemblies in$-$house was not considered viable as their volumes were expected to drop dramatically, when the variety being offered increased. Also the company needed all the existing space for the more flexible final assembly process needed for the greater variety of products being sold.

$$ Build final products to customer order.

This plan had been approved in September of $2022.$ The plan and associated personnel layoffs were announced in October $2022,$ with the layoffs scheduled for December $31,2022.$ The increased variety of products had been announced in October, with the first build$-$to$-$order shipments scheduled for Jan $2023.$