This is a case study, I don't need the answer already posted on Chegg on someone's question. Please just provide new answers on your own otherwise do not copy paste.

Browning Motors

Excess capacity, foreign competition, and national recession have forced automotive

giant Browning Motors (BM) to tighten its belt and to engage in broad restructuring with

no end in sight. As a consequence, thousands of Browning Motors employees and

thousands more of its suppliers' employees have lost their jobs.

To make matters worse for auto workers, BM has recently announced a radical step

regarding parts acquisitions: all BM purchase contracts for components are open for

negotiation. What makes this even scarier for auto workers is that notification of this

shift in policy went to BM's own parts operations. This means that all suppliers, including

BM's captive units, must clearly compete on the same terms. Thus, BM workers fear the

loss of many more jobs to outside (especially foreign) sources.

Already facing BM's plan to close its tool-and-die shop and lay off 250 employees,

disgruntled workers at the Gooden stamping plant reacted to the news about parts

contracts with a strike. Feeling their efforts to help cut costs and improve efficiency had

brought them no direct benefits, all 2,500 union members at the Gooden plant walked

out on a wildcat strike.

The workers were prepared to concede earlier job losses, but their persistent anger

against outside sources has made the most recent plans intolerable. Expecting that

matters will only worsen if they continue to concede, the workers are prepared to show

they still have clout. Within the current scope of BM's operations, the Gooden workers

are apparently right.

Twenty-five hundred Gooden workers may have walked, but almost 43,000 workers are

left idle. Due to shortages of key parts manufactured at Gooden, the impact of the strike

has already spread to nine of the twelve BM plants which Gooden serves. The Galaxy

plant, manufacturer of BM's best-selling new model, shut down only one day after

the Gooden strike started. Eight other BM plants (which build vans, compacts, and

luxury cars) did not last a week. The impact has been so quick due to BM's just-in-

time inventory management in which plants keep only enough parts on hand to meet

immediate production needs.

Browning Motors looks vulnerable to the effects of the strike. The company refuses to

back away from its restructuring plans, but realizes at some point it must restart

operations.

Its Galaxy plant has a heavy backlog of orders, and company-wide after-tax losses from

the strike are estimated at $50 million a week. The crippling effects of the strike are

reopening many issues which have troubled BM's broad cost-cutting program. The

Gooden strike is forcing Browning Motors to re-examine all the links in its chain.

Questions.

1.What do you think is the main issue at Browning Motors? (20 points)

2.What do you think are the symptoms that created the Main Issue? Explain how they have affected the Main Issue Identified. (20 points)

3.Describe briefly the operating environment of a giant automotive company and the purposes of inventory within this environment. (20 points)

4.Explain the just -in-case concepts of manufacturing inventory management. (20 points)

5. What problems are associated with the application of the just-in-time concepts at Browning Motors? (20 points)

a) Is just-in-time a practical approach for Browning Motors?