Develop a new strategic plan for AAR Corp. This plan needs to display the corporation's current state and environment and lay out plans to grow and improve further.

You need to provide an updated business and corporate strategy, specifically, the changes you want to make to increase company performance.

To write the business and corporate strategy initiatives, the following sources are most relevant:

$-$ The company$$s annual report $(10-$K filing$)$

$-$ IBISWorld industry report

$-$ Company website

The business and corporate strategic plan should describe three strategic initiatives that you, as the CEO of the corporation, like to design and implement to improve firm performance. These plans could relate to:

Improving business functions: changing value chain processes to be more efficient or effective.

Repositioning: moving to a different price$/$value point within the industry to attract a different segment or avoid competition.

Horizontal integration: merging or acquiring an existing competitor to create business synergies or setting up a new unit targeting a different segment.

Vertical $($dis$)$integration: expanding into the territory of current suppliers or customers to improve business performance, or outsourcing certain activities.

Diversifying: moving into a new industry to reap the advantages of being active in multiple industries or divesting activities and refocusing on the core industry.

For each initiative, it should outline three aspects:

Explain how the initiative addresses a weakness, exploits a strength, mitigates a threat, etc.

The motivation: explain how this initiative can improve firm performance $($or prevent losses$)$ by relating it to reasons we have studied in this course. Example: "better positioning our product for the growing Gen Z segment" or "reducing coordination issues and ensuring sufficient supply by vertical integration".

The implementation: Describe how it could be implemented within the corporation and be as precise as possible. How the initiative is implemented and why in that way. If we diversify, why into that industry instead of other industries, what entry method will be used $($who will we acquire$),$ and how long will it take? Example: "The firm should acquire company X by purchasing all its shares, and then fully integrate it$".$

Evaluation: We need to have a rough idea about the potential of each initiative, which means estimates about the potential revenues, costs, profits, and the initial investment required. Only then we can understand the potential of each initiative.

Example: $"$By vertically integrating, the firm can reduce the costs of supplies and increase the profit margin by $4\%,$ or $$40$ million annually. Supplier X$\text{'}$s market value is $$120$ million, so the firm can acquire it for $$130$ million, which means the payback time is $4$ years. Yet, there is a risk of integration: it reduces incentives to be efficient and there are cultural differences between the two. If the integration fails, it should be possible to sell Supplier X to a competitor or spin it off for $$90$ million, which means an estimated loss of $$50$ million."