Reference: OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Chapter 2 "JAY HEIZER, BARRY RENDER and CHUCK MUNSON

Analyze how RBR solved its global manufacturing challenge to provide its "high mix, low volume" built-to-order precisely instrumented products. Determine how each of the 10 OM strategy decisions applies to RBR (some research may be needed). What are the mission and strategic vision for this organization applying the concepts you learned in the chapter? Complete a SWOT analysis on this company discussing their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are relevant to RBR.

• There is a SAFE ASSIGN for any copy-paste so please Don't copy-paste from anywhere there Is a plagiarism detecting will be flagged
• please provide an assignment with at lees 250 words and complete analysis of this company discussing their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are relevant to RBR.

Why RBR Switched to Cloud PLM? RBR Company RBR Ltd. Location Ottawa, Canada Industry Industrial Business Challenges Reduce long product development cycles Enable global deployment Meet challenging product launch deadlines BUSINESS CHALLENGES Quarterbacked by a team of enthusiastic engineers and oceanographers, RBR is part of a micro niche industry that makes high-precision scientific instrumentation for oceanographic, freshwater, groundwater and cryospheric research. The Ottawa, Canada-based company's recent products include a versatile data buoy controller, laboratory salinometer and a mooring line modem. RBR invests considerable effort RBR solo into research and development, which is carried out in collaboration RBR solo with customers to ensure that the instruments produced are precisely RBR solo what the customer wants and can afford. "Our instruments are all built on a modular platform to permit rapid custom configuration," says Dr. Greg Johnson, RBR president. "All of our new generation single, dual and multi-channel loggers are based on a new architecture that incorporates increased memory, more battery power and faster data download Johnson says the company's "high mix, low volume" built-to-order products can present a manufacturing challenge, especially since the products are deployed on all seven continents. According to Johnson, one of the more significant manufacturing hurdles impacting RBR is tracking revisions and form-fit function equivalence. "Calibration for us is a long time consuming step" he says. "And so lead times can be awkward. Trying to make lots of different information systems talk to each other can be challenging." Solutions Arena PLM BOMControl Business Benefits Formalized more efficient product development processes Ensured globally dispersed teams worked from most current bill of material (BOM) version Provided a scalable economic product lifecycle management (PLM) solution 66 We didn't want to host anything ourselves. We wanted to be able to get at the information from anywhere, not just on certain computers in the office. My experience with in-house PLM solutions left me tired of on-premises PLM and choose a cloud based PLM solution. - Dr. Greg Johnson, President, RBR Ltd. To ensure quality standards and balancing inventory against lead times, Johnson realized the company needed to formalize its bill of materials (BOM) process "Arena is very economical and offers excellent pricing for small companies. We can scale as we need to," says Johnson. "We didn't want something with historical baggage of systems that were designed in the DOS days." Another problem Johnson needed to address was the growing need for a coherent part numbering scheme. "We didn't have revision control for mechanical parts before, we only did it for electronic parts," he admits. RBRA SOLUTIONS Because Arena PLM BOM Control was a cloud-based solution, it removed the infrastructure, IT concerns and frustrations associated with on-premise solutions "Arena looked like a modern design done by people who understood how to build things in the cloud," he says. "BOMControl takes care of number creation, revision control, bill of materials and costing. Allowing my globally dispersed team to access the BOM anywhere was a big plus 166 Arena is very economical and offers excellent pricing for small companies - Dr. Greg Johnson, President, RBR Ltd. Arena's affordability was also attractive to Johnson, who in the past had been discouraged by the compulsory minimum seat count demanded by other PLM solutions. "Arena is very economical and offers excellent pricing for small companies," says Johnson. "We can scale as we need to. We see that Arena supports much larger companies as well, which is great, we want to be able to scale as we need it and not be forced to pay just to get started" BUSINESS RESULTS With Arena, Johnson was able to implement new processes quickly and easily. "We were able to get going in a couple of weeks, which was great. We wouldn't have done it if it had been a multi-month project -- that would have been a disaster Easy and quick implementation was a major benefit considering RBR's competitive advantage over enterprise-sized companies, as was accelerated time to market. "Arena helps with the speed of innovation and ability to be agile," says Johnson. "There are a couple of other manufacturers who are bigger than us, but they are not able to release new products very rapidly." RBR 66 Because we have Arena, we can pull ideas together and make fully formed products in a short period of time and deliver them to market faster than our competition. - Dr. Greg Johnson, President, RBR Led. NEXT STEPS "Moving forward, Johnson is considering Arena PLM Demand, a solution that provides manufacturers with part visibility to calculate aggregated component needs for their entire product portfolio to better negotiate with their suppliers and contract manufacturers