Hello all,
As said before, the first round is going to be the case study, where all the participating teams will be required to submit a hard copy, based on which they will be selected for the intra-dept finals.
The rules of the event are as follows:
Takaishi Printing Company (TP) is a small printing company located in Ishii Town in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. TP which has been a family business since 1933 has an excellent reputation for doing quality work. While sales have increased by 50 percent in the past 6 years, profits have been invariable.
Tsunemi Takaishi is the third generation of his family to own and operate TP. (As is the custom in Japan, the ownership of the company is passed down to the eldest son). Tsunemi is 62 years old and has realized that he must be concerned with the management succession of his family business. None of his relatives or his sons seems interested in managing TP.
Tsunemi is also wondering if he should try to expand TP while running it himself for a few more years and then try to sell it when it would be more attractive to a potential buyer. He has realized that the large long-term debt TP has had for years, as a result of the depression and war years, would be detrimental in expanding or selling TP.
TP is a printing company that specializes in printing advertisements, greeting cards, forms, handouts, handbooks, business cards etc. More than 95 percent of the products printed have a variety of samples to be shown to the customers.
Sales persons visit customers and suggest what type of products would be suitable for their needs. Some customers place custom orders with their unique style. Service is the real product of TP. Tsunemi’s credo is ‘Be courteous, be helpful, be precise and make a long term relation with the customer’.
TP can print with one to four colors. About 95 % of TP’s printing is done in one color, typically black or green. Four color works is much more complicated to do and is usually subcontracted to another printer. Printing is done in Japanese and there is no demand for other languages.
The sales manager is Koichiro Takaishi, who is 45 years old and is the youngest brother of Tsunemi. He has three sales representatives reporting to him. Koichiro handles customers in Tokushima city and Komiyama, the next town from Ishii. He prices the orders himself at the customer’s place considering the importance of the customer to TP. Pricing is based on his experience and Tsunemi believes his brother does a good job and handles the sales representatives well.
Mr. Oshida, one of the sales representatives, is outgoing, active and hard-working. He is good at finding new customers by just calling or visiting them. His sales pricing is based on his experience and Tsunemi’s manual. He is the only one to pioneer new customers in the last few years. Another hard working sales representative, Mr. Saka has worked for printing companies for years and has good contacts. Tsunemi is planning to terminate him but unfortunately he has been unable to find a better sales representative and he does not want to lose the big customers found by him.
No commissions are paid to sales representatives. No one assigns them work on a daily basis. As a rule, big customers that make up 60 % of the volume stay as good and loyal customers. Ninety percent of the customers places repeat orders. Advertising is done for local and small/new customers in the local newspapers.
TP is not worried about losing customers to competitors because the customers like TP’s printing quality. However, they do expect a price discount. On the other hand, TP would like to raise prices because labor costs are increasing every year, but pricing is very competitive.
There are about 380 competitors in the Tokushima Prefecture. Of these about 80 belong to the Tokushima printing General commission. The largest competitor has 300 employees and the smallest – 1 employee. TP is a middle sized company.
There is only one small competitor in Ishii town. He believes printing business is not popular among the new graduates. Ishii is small in size and market. Tsunemi tries to be a watchdog over his employees but is not able to find time.
Shundo, Tsunemi’s eldest son, who was working in the computer part of TP, sabotaged the computer records while Tsunemi was in the United States visiting his youngest son who is finishing his MBA degree. Shundo did it because of resentment for Koichiro, who had been left in charge.
Kiyohita, his youngest son, is pursuing his MBA degree. Tsunemi wants him to join the family business, but Kiyohita himself, wishes to start a Business consultancy firm. In any event, Tsunemi believed that it would take 10 years to train someone who is not experienced in the training business. Although Koichiro mentally considers himself the successor to his elder brother, Tsunemi does not consider him so because of his lack of human relations skills and inexperience in managing. Theoretically, a manager could be hired to operate the business but such a person would be extremely hard to find.
Recently, Tsunemi has taken a lot of pain to revamp the company. After all of this turmoil, TP has begun to make some progress.
Thus, he continues to contemplate the strategy that he and TP should pursue in the future.
QUESTION:
