Note: All the case questions relate to Part Two below. Part One is for background purposes only.

Part One- On November 15, 2018, Jeanne B. Douglas, obtained a loan of $15,000 from her uncle and purchased a French bakery business on a busy street in downtown Vancouver. A year later, she was thinking to shut down the bakery. When her uncle asked her what went wrong, she replied: Well, two months after I opened the bakery, my main supplier increased the prices for READYMADE dough by 100%. The supplier indicated that the prices will eventually come down but there were no guarantees. I contacted other suppliers but I just couldnt find the same quality of dough so I had to increase the prices of my goods and keep buying from the same supplier. Once I increased my prices, some of my customers left and some customers even started ordering similar items online from a new startup company that only does business online. I ended up lowering my prices and was barely getting by. The reputation of the business was not as strong as I thought and there were rumours that some customers were not happy with our location due to the limited available parking. I have not been making enough money and was putting in lots of hours. There were also rumours that someone was going to open a bakery across the street. I had made less money in all of the the last six months than in the first three months after my purchase of the business. Sales have been dropping and the supply prices have been increasing. I will get out soon before it is too late. Her uncle responded, At least you have limited liability my dear. By the way, did you consider that a lot of dough prices were impacted by the temporary strike of some truck drivers?

Part Two Perhaps we need to consider hiring non-union drivers. The negotiations are very slow-going so far, our reputation is being impacted and a customer just cancelled their orders with us, Rick C. Ayling, CEO of International Truck Company (ITC) stated while looking at John D. Elash VP of HR and Labour Relations. John responded: We have a lot of good employees who have been with ITC for a long time Rick. Our drivers are some of the most reliable in Canada. I know they want higher wages but I believe we can get to a resolution with the union in the next couple of days. I just got a call from the union representative and they are willing to go to arbitration. Rick C. Ayling nodded in agreement and said, OK then we may not need to hire non-union workers but we still need to formulate a new strategy. Our drivers have produced solid on time delivery results for us for years but our average wages are higher than the competition and if we have to pay them higher wages we will not be competitive. We also have not been able to raise the necessary cash to buy some more trucks and expand further south and take advantage of the higher transportation demand there. John Chow, VP Operations and Finance responded in agreement: For sure. Our benchmarking data shows that our wages are the 2^nd highest among 14 regional trucking companies. The wages will probably end up being the highest after the arbitration. We have the highest customer satisfaction results among our competitors and unlike some competitors we are a ISO 9001 certified company. But capacity-wise we really are maxed out and could use some new trucks. We may also want to look at electric options when replacing our older fleet. We pay a lot for fuel and maintenance of our old truck fleet! Rick jumped in: I concur but new electric trucks are very expensive. We need to improve our cost structures. We have an aging expensive workforce and ISO 9001 certification added substantial management overhead. Perhaps we should put a team together from different areas to look at operational efficiencies and cost reducing quality improvements. John, could you please do that and report back in a few days? After which John Chow replied by saying he will get right on it.

A) Other than contracting jobs out to non-union workers, specify two other tactics that ITC management can consider.

B) List three examples of the QA tools in this case. The responsibility for which of these tools were delegated by Rick C. Ayling to one of his subordinates?

C) What form of departmentalization structure does ITC adhere to? In addition, list the key departments mentioned in this case.

D) Conduct a SWOT Analysis and formulate a strategy for ITC.