Teradyne: hitting the great wall

Synopsis This case presents a problem with competing in the Chinese market faced by Jeff Hotchkiss in early 2000s, then President of the Assembly Test Division (ATD) at Teradyne. Teradyne is the world’s largest producer of automatic test equipment for electronic assembly on production lines. Hotchkiss needed to find a solution to prevent ATD from continued loss of market share in equipment sales and loss of service revenue in China. Various factors to be considered include customer differentiation and service supply chain configuration. Research methodology This case is a field researched case. The research team met with Teradyne’s division president and top management team, and was given access to the documents including customer feedback. Relevant courses and levels Graduate or undergraduate: operations management, supply chain management.

Simulation Modeling for Analysis of a (Q, r) Inventory System under Supply Disruption and Customer Differentiation with Partial Backordering

We have modeled a new (Q, r) inventory system which involves a single product, a supplier, and a retailer with customer differentiation under continuous review inventory policy. The supplier provides the retailer with all requirements, and the retailer sells products to the customers. The supplying process is randomly subject to disruptions. Partial backordering is applied when a stock out occurs, and customer can select either to leave the system without purchasing or to backorder products. The customers are categorized into two main classes regarding to their backordering probabilities. The main contribution of this paper is including the customer differentiation in the inventory model. We used simulation technique to verify the impact of supply disruptions and customer differentiation and carried out sensitivity analysis. To test the performance of the model, we have compared our model to one from the latest related research. As the results show, the average of total annual cost of the (Q, r) inventory system is lower than that of the previously developed models such as (r, T) inventory systems.

Industry Environment And Business Strategy: A Comparison Of Contingency Theory Expectations And Relationships Between Small Manufacturing Firm Managers Perceptions Of Environment And Strategy

Contingency theory suggests that that an appropriate match must be made between strategy and industry environment conditions. This study compared contingency theory expectations with the associations between perceptions of industry environment conditions and reported firm strategy, as reported by the firms president and national sales manager. Confirming theory expectations, there were significant and positive associations between perceived industry technical/market turbulence and reported growth/differentiation strategy as well as significant and negative associations with low cost strategy. The direction and significance of these associations were similar regardless of which manager supplied the perception of technical/market turbulence or the reported strategy. However there were differences across the two managers reports in the associations between strategy and perceptions of product differentiation, customer differentiation, and competitive intensity. Confirming theory expectations, there were significant and positive associations between perceptions of industry competitive intensity and the sales managers reported use of low cost strategy, but not the presidents reported use of that strategy. Confirming theory expectations, there was a significant and positive association between the presidents (but not the sales managers) perceptions of industry product differentiation and managers reported use of growth/differentiation strategy. There was a significant and positive association between the sales managers (but not the presidents) perceptions of industry customer differentiation and managers reported use of growth/differentiation strategy. The presidents and sales managers perceptions of product and customer differentiation had significant negative associations with the sales managers (but not the presidents) reported use of low cost strategy. The authors discuss potential explanations for these results and implications for managers.