Case Study Description of General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B)
Describes what has happened since the introduction of just-in-time production techniques were developed to reduce inventory. Reviews the progress to date in such areas as process rationalization; set-up reduction; quality improvement and leveling the scheduling; and discusses options for the future. The aim of the case is to show students the details of implementing a new production method.
Swot Analysis of "General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B)" written by David A. Garvin, Suzanne Detreville includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Thermocouple Leveling facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Manufacturing, Product development, Productivity, Strategy execution, Supply chain and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) casestudy better are - – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Thermocouple Leveling, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Thermocouple Leveling operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Thermocouple Leveling
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Technology & Operations field.
4. Making a Technology & Operations topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Thermocouple Leveling
Strengths General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Thermocouple Leveling in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Thermocouple Leveling has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Thermocouple Leveling is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Analytics focus
– Thermocouple Leveling is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by David A. Garvin, Suzanne Detreville can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Thermocouple Leveling in the sector have low bargaining power. General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Thermocouple Leveling to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Thermocouple Leveling
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Thermocouple Leveling does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Thermocouple Leveling is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Thermocouple Leveling is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Thermocouple Leveling has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Thermocouple Leveling has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Thermocouple Leveling has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Thermocouple Leveling in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Technology & Operations industry
– General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Thermocouple Leveling to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Technology & Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Thermocouple Leveling to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Thermocouple Leveling are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Weaknesses General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Thermocouple Leveling has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B), is just above the industry average. Thermocouple Leveling needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Thermocouple Leveling has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Thermocouple Leveling, firm in the HBR case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B), in the dynamic environment Thermocouple Leveling has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Thermocouple Leveling has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Thermocouple Leveling is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Thermocouple Leveling has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Thermocouple Leveling is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Thermocouple Leveling has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) HBR case study mentions - Thermocouple Leveling takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Thermocouple Leveling needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Opportunities General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Thermocouple Leveling to increase its market reach. Thermocouple Leveling will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Thermocouple Leveling can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Thermocouple Leveling operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Technology & Operations sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Thermocouple Leveling can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Thermocouple Leveling has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Thermocouple Leveling is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Thermocouple Leveling can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Developing new processes and practices
– Thermocouple Leveling can develop new processes and procedures in Technology & Operations industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Thermocouple Leveling can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Thermocouple Leveling can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Technology & Operations segment.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Technology & Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Thermocouple Leveling can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Thermocouple Leveling can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Thermocouple Leveling can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Thermocouple Leveling to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Thermocouple Leveling has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Thermocouple Leveling to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) case study. Thermocouple Leveling can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) are -
Increasing wage structure of Thermocouple Leveling
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Thermocouple Leveling.
Environmental challenges
– Thermocouple Leveling needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Thermocouple Leveling can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Technology & Operations industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Thermocouple Leveling demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Thermocouple Leveling business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Technology & Operations field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Thermocouple Leveling can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Thermocouple Leveling needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Technology & Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Thermocouple Leveling high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Thermocouple Leveling will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Thermocouple Leveling can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Regulatory challenges
– Thermocouple Leveling needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Technology & Operations industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Thermocouple Leveling can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Thermocouple Leveling has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Technology & Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Thermocouple Leveling needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Technology & Operations sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of General Electric--Thermocouple Manufacturing (B) is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Thermocouple Leveling needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
