Horizon Foods Corporation

1) nerve Summary (Whats the issue? ) position Foods Corporation (hereafter Horizon) is a still-growing, nationwide foods organization that is astray known for its high quality products. With $300 million sales each year, the firm has been relatively lucky so far, gaining good reputation and arousing much interest of the public through its brokers and local retailers. However, as the accompany prospers and customers demand more, Horizon foresees a coming crisis. The distribution issue, which the company has faced for a while, is now create stock-outs, and increase competition in the food market is threatening the companys market sh be.Authorities involved kick the bucket to scrutinize the issue and its cause, and they argon eager to blame each other for the problems. The division of labor amongst two major departments selling and Sales, and return seems to need a complete rearrangement for a more effective process. Horizon should withal analyze its current brand position ing in the market and rework its strategies if needed. 2) Q1. What ar the characteristics of the market served by the Horizon Foods Corporation? Horizon is a specialty foods processor.It has served a national market composed of food brokers who represent retail store chains. The food brokers make orders to Horizon. Generally, the orders atomic number 18 small. The outturn is through with(p) in two different plants thanks to the ingredients from some food suppliers. The plants argon located in rustic areas to reduce the cost of transportation. Moreover, Horizon produces in large quantities, and the food produced is very good in quality. The business is dispatched to several public warehouses. Then, these warehouses use contract carriers to deliver the products to the customers.Because of the small orders, the transportation cost to retail stores peck be high. The market is very competitive since many of Horizons food competitors also propose a complete production line (See v ermiform process for diagram A The Schema of the Market). 2) Q2. What problems exist at the Horizon Foods Corporation? Two issues exist at Horizon namely, incompetent division of labor and increasing market competition. Firstly, inefficient division of labor is simply the inappropriate split between delivery from production and service from the warehouse.The problem might also be termed the lack of effective communication between the two major departments Marketing and Sales (hereafter Marketing), and Production. Marketing is mainly responsible for promotion, merchandise, and delivery to customers whereas Production focuses on manufacture and transportation to public warehouses. The customers demand for the firms products, which are continuously deliberate and evaluated by the Marketing, is preferably unknown to the Production, and a lack of such inter-communication is the cause of the number of stock-outs that retailers of the Horizon Foods Corporation put up been recently ex periencing.Secondly, increasing market competition poses a challenge to the firm. Competition is inevitable in a market, but it has now become a serious issue for Horizon as its competitors guard begun to spin complete product lines that compete directly with Horizons. The firm should begin to analyze how advantageously its brand is positioned among its competitors and figure out its new competitive priorities if need. 2) Q3. Why do you think the problems exist? at that touch are two intrinsic problems.First problem is that the way in which Horizon holds a meeting is inefficient as different staffs join the discussion at different periods of time communication across unlike departments is not effective. Second problem is that Horizons corporate manner does not allow every entity to openly discuss with proper manner for example, when Roger commented about Production department supplying the market, Sally tack together the comment as almost an insult. It is important that the cor porate atmosphere is set right for discussions to take place openly and wholeheartedly.In addition to intrinsic problems, there are practical causes for the problems. Firstly, Horizon failed in managing its caudex. There are simply too many warehouses. The existence of many warehouses is the cause of the firms high inventory cost. Production that takes place in each and every single warehouse is rather small in quantity, and consequently, the cost to transport the products from many different warehouses is very high. It is to be noted that raw materials and ingredients are also transported over long distances.Delivery schedules vary for every warehouse, and so there are uncertainties that put Horizon at the risk of stock-outs. Secondly, the way in which Horizon has divided its management is very inefficient. As of now, selling managers are in charge of product inventory whereas national sales manager is responsible for coordination of warehouses and arrangement of delivery. It is rather strange that inventory management is separated from coordination of warehouses and arrangement of delivery in fact, all three aspects are so intimately inter-related that they should be managed by one entity deep down an organization.Moreover, increasing market competition, which is something that is inevitable, must be dealt with by constantly re-analyzing Horizons positioning and its competitive priorities in the industry. 2) Q4. What would you suggest the task furiousness recommend in order to gain control over this product movement process? sooner recommendations regarding control over product movement process can be made, one must maintain that it has been quite a while since Horizon has been having this problem.The quote Are we finally beginning to recognize that we have a distribution problem shows how long it took for Horizon to finally realize, acknowledge, and gather together all the relevant authorities to discuss the issue. Corporate culture at Horizon must ch ange in a way that would enable all entities within the organization to openly discuss any issues. Now, there are ways in which Horizon could gain more control over this product movement process. Firstly, Horizon could establish a new department namely, Communications Management that specifically takes care of interactions between Marketing and Production.The Communications Management would act as a bridge, allowing a free flow of information, people, and other entities (See Appendix for Diagram B Horizon Foods Corporations Future State Map). The staffs in the department would ruin a virtual contact system with each and every single authority relevant to personnel, purchasing, finance, marketing product line, and national sales manager the staffs would just concentrate on effective communication within the firm.Furthermore, the new department could specialize in Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) to formulate detailed schedules for obtaining raw materials and manufacturing pr oducts. Secondly, Horizon could fool a contract with a logisticals company that will exclusively work with Horizon. Currently, delivery schedules vary by carrier and are sometimes erratic because each public warehouse chooses its own distinct logistic company for delivery. Forming a contract to have a specific company to arrange all the undeniable deliveries would reduce the number of stock-outs.