Acme and Omega Analysis

Omega and Acme competed for a major photocopier manufacturer’s project. Photocopier firm gave 2 weeks time to manufacture 100 prototypes each. Based on the prototype photocopier manufacture will award the final order. The photocopier manufacturer has told both firms that speed was critical. Result Omega had delivery on time while Acme had delivery delay and Acme’s 10/100 units were found defective. Omega’s all prototypes were passed. In this case, it seems Omega was so much more effective than Acme. However, the final contract was split between the two firms. Acme reduced its unit cost by 20 percent and also maintained zero defects. Thus, Acme was ultimately awarded the total contract. It can tell us that, for the photocopier manufacturer, it did not only consider speed, it also considered the cost.

Moreover, John Tyler was client oriented. He traditionally worked to keep important clients happy. He telephoned someone at the photocopier company at least twice a week and got to know the head designer quite well. Therefore, after Jim Rawls found an error in the design of the connector cable and taken corrective action on their prototypes, the head designer of the photocopier manufacturer told Tyler that he had check out the designer error and that omega was right. To the photocopier manufacturer, a good relationship was also an advantage to win the contract.

In this case, Omega had delivery on time, it seems Omega was so much more effective than Acme. However, there were problems existed in omega. Organizational structure and work allocation was not clear. Organizational chart seems like artificial barrier. Also, there’s no well defined job specification. For Acme, In this case, although information flow was better in Omega, sometimes such information flow also created hindrance by creating interference in each other domain. Acme did well because of the way they communicated. In long run as Acme had a structure, this allowed them to be well organized,