case study questions

- Propose a mission statement for this company. Discuss clearly and in detail why you chose this mission statement.

- Based on the mission statement you proposed, identify at least three goals that the organization may adopt to accomplish this mission

Home-Style Cookies CASE une The Company The Customers The baking company is located in a small town in New York State. The The cookies are sold in convenience stores and super- bakery is run by two brothers. The company employs fewer than 200 markets throughout New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The company people, mainly blue-collar workers, and the atmosphere is informal. markets its cookies as "good food"no additives or preservatives and this appeals to a health-conscious segment of the market. Many custom- The Product ers are over 45 years of age, and prefer a cookie that is soft and not too The company's only product is soft cookies, of which it makes over sweet. Parents with young children also buy the cookies 50 varieties. Larger companies, such as Nabisco, Sunshine, and The Production Process Keebler, have traditionally produced biscuit cookies, in which most of the water has been baked out, resulting in crisp cookies. The cook- The company has two continuous band ovens that it uses to bake the cook- ies have no additives or preservatives. The high quality of the cookies. The production process is called a batch processing system. It begins ies has enabled the company to develop a strong market niche for as soon as management gets orders from distributors. These orders are (continued) its product. (continued Scrap used to schedule production. At the start of each shifta list of the cook- The bakery is run very efficiently and has minimal amounts of scrap les to be made that day is delivered to the person in charge of modng For example, if a batch is mixed improperly, it is sold for dog food. Bro- That person checks a master list, which indicates the ingredients needed ken cookies are used in the oatmeal cookies. These practices reduce for each type of cookie, and enters that information into the computer the cost of ingredients and save on waste disposal costs. The com The computer then determines the amount of each ingredient needed, pany also uses heat reclamation: The heat that escapes from the two according to the quantity of cookies ordered, and relays that information ovens is captured and used to boil the water that supplies the heat to storage silos located outside the plant where the main ingredients (flour, to the building. Also, the use of automation in the mixing process has sugar and cake flour) are stored. The ingredients are automatically sent to resulted in a reduction in waste compared with the manual methods giant mixing machines where the ingredients are combined with proper used previously amounts of eggs, water, and flavorings. After the ingredients have been mied, the batter is poured into a cutting machine where it is cut into indi- New Products vidual cookies. The cookies are then dropped onto a conveyor belt and Ideas for new products come from customers, employees, and observa- transported through one of two ovens. Filled cookies, such as apple, date, tions of competitors' products. New ideas are first examined to deter- and raspberry require an additional step for filling and folding, The nonfilled cookies are cut on a diagonal rather than round. The mine whether the cookies can be made with existing equipment. If so, a diagonal-cut cookies require less space than straight-cut cookies sample run is made to determine the cost and time requirements. If the and the result is a higher level of productivity. In addition, the com- results are satisfactory, marketing tests are conducted to see if there is pany recently increased the length of each oven by 25 feet, which also a demand for the product. Increased the rate of production As the cookies emerge from the ovens, they are fed onto spiral cool Potential Improvements ing racks 20 feet high and 3 feet wide. As the cookies come off the There are a number of areas of potential improvement at the bakery cooling racks, workers place the cookies into boxes manually, removing One possibility would be to automate packing the cookies into boxes any broken or deformed cookies in the process. The boxes are then Although labor costs are not high, automating the process might save wrapped, sealed, and labeled automatically. some money and increase efficiency. So far, the owners have resisted Inventory making this change because they feel an obligation to the community to employ the 30 women who now do the boxing manually. Another Most cookies are loaded immediately onto trucks and shipped to dis possible improvement would be to use suppliers who are located doser tributors. A small percentage are stored temporarily in the company's to the plant. That would reduce delivery lead times and transportation warehouse, but they must be shipped shortly because of their limited costs, but the owners are not convinced that local suppliers could pro- shelf life. Other inventory includes individual cookie boxes, shipping vide the same good quality. Other opportunities have been proposed in boxes, labels, and cellophane for wrapping. Labels are reordered fre- quently, in small batches, because FDA label requirements are subject quality of the product might suffer. recent years, but the owners rejected them because they feared that the to change, and the company does not want to get stuck with labels it can't use. The bulk silos are refilled two or three times a week, depend- ing on how quickly supplies are used. Cookies are baked in a sequence that minimizes downtime for cleaning. For instance, light-colored cookies (eg, chocolate chip) are baked before dark-colored cookies (eg, fudge), and oatmeal cookies are baked before oatmeal raisin cookies. This permits the company to avoid having to clean the processing equipment every time a different type of cookie is produced. Quality The bakery prides itself on the quality of its cookies. Cookies are sampled randomly by a quality control Inspector as they come off the line to assure that their taste and consistency are satisfactory, and that they have been baked to the proper degree. Also, workers on the line are responsible for removing defective cookies when they spot them. The company has also installed an X-ray machine on the line that can detect small bits of metal filings that may have gotten into cookies during the production process The use of automatic equipment for transporting raw materials and mix- ing batter has made it easier to maintain a sterile process