How does their workforce reflect their global strategy?

Operations Strategy at Regal Marine Regal Marine, one of the United States's 10 largest power-boat entertainment." Fortunately, Regal has been paying down debt and manufacturers, achieves its mission-providing luxury perfor- increasing market share. mance boats to customers worldwide-using the strategy of differ- Regal has also joined with scores of other independent boat entiation. It differentiates its products through constant innovation, makers in the American Boatbuilders Association. Through econunique features, and high quality. Increasing sales at the Orlando, omies of scale in procurement, Regal is able to navigate against Florida, family-owned firm suggest that the strategy is working. billion-dollar competitor Brunswick (maker of the Sea Ray and As a quality boat manufacturer, Regal Marine starts with con- Bayliner brands). The Global Company Profile featuring Regal tinuous innovation, as reflected in computer-aided design (CAD), Marine (which opens Chapter 5) provides further background on high-quality moulds, and close tolerances that are controlled Regal and its strategy. through both defect charts and rigorous visual inspection. In-house quality is not enough, however. Because a product is only as good as the parts put into it, Regal has established close ties with a large number of its suppliers to ensure both flexibility and perfect parts. With the help of these suppliers, Regal can profitably produce a product line of 22 boats, ranging from the $14000 19-foot boat to the $500000 44-foot Commodore yacht. "We build boats," says VP Tim Kuck, "but we're really in the 'fun' business. Our competition includes not only 300 other boat, canoe, and yacht manufacturers in our $17 billion industry, but home theatres, the internet, and all kinds of alternative family