FRICTION MATERIALS LTD.

Friction Materials Ltd.

Friction Materials Ltd.

Introduction

In today's competitive market, there are different significant issues on which manufacturers have based their corporate strategy. Defining the major strategy of the company would be the first stage of enhancing the operations by which the company could achieve competitive advantages.

In this study, the Friction Materials Ltd has been comprehensively investigated to predict the required capabilities to face the new market. Beside this, a series of measures have been recommended in order to reach the corporate main objectives. At first, it is necessary to obtain a general concept about the customer's requirements and expectations which directly refers to each product situation in the market. Friction Materials Ltd is producing two different types of Disk Brake Pads (DBPs) including the Specialist products and the after sales products. The company has confronted a new, high potential market which is called OE market. The OE market imposes its specific requirements, which could be in contrast with that of the other products. Thus, these specifications should be considered for determining the future strategy. Obviously, improving the capabilities of the company implies a particular technology or different facilities. Beside this, type of the process by which the manufacturer produces its products, has direct effect on responding to the customer's demand.

Different approaches for understanding the Customer

The first step to achieve a pioneered strategy in a company is to determine the products position in the market leading to a better understanding of what customer needs. (Watt, 2009) In this case study, different tools and models has been used to understand the customers' requirement, products' status and market condition. Therefore, it is necessary to specify a clear definition of each tool at first stage.

The John Puttick's Grid

The John Puttick's Grid is a powerful tool for understanding the relationship between the market, the company order winning criteria and business processes. It was developed firstly in 1980 by John Puttick. (Watt, 2009)

Placement of each product in this graph is based on two main characteristics; the demand characteristics which in known as uncertainty and the complexity of operations by which the products are being processed. According to these two criteria, there are four different placements available for each product. (Watt, 2009)

Order Winners, Order Qualifiers and Order losers

The order qualifiers are those specifications at which the manufacturer should be strong, at least same as its competitors, to be considered as a supplier by the customer. Furthermore, the order winners are some specifications helping the company to win the orders in the market. The order winners are rated from 100 while the significance of order qualifiers is defined by Q or QQ. Q refers to those having less weight and QQ refers to critical order qualifiers which are known as Order losers. (Hill, 1995)

The polar diagrams

The Polar diagram is an illustrative tool to show the parameters which the manufacturer should concentrate on. Basically, it has five different axes which are representatives of five performance ...