Case Study
CASE STUDY 1
MAKING FRIENDS AT PILLCO
Samir Sethi, the Managing Director of Pillco, a Mumbai based textile manufacturer, was quite pleased with himself. It was Friday afternoon and his flight from Tokyo was just about to land at Mumbai. In conjuction with his Sales Director, Aman Kalra, he had just returned from Japan where he managed to successfully complete negotiations on a Rs. 25 million order from a Japanese folfing manufacturer, Kokuna. The order was for the manufacture of a new range of golf seaters and accessories and was the biggest single order that the company had dealt in the last five-years history. They had come up against stiff competition from other sportswear manufacturers in India and Japan.
To secure the order, Pillco had to promise delivery of the first batch of newly desgined golf wear within six weeks and bulk order shipments of 10,000 pullovers every two months. The created a problem. At maximum production, Pillco could only manufacture and meet these order requirements by dropping 80% of its ongoing business. It also meant that three new computer controlled manufacturing machines and a new computer aided design system would be put to work to come up with the new style and design to manufacture the sweaters. These had been recently purchased at great expense. The problem was who would operate the machinery and design systems to meet the order requirements, and what to do with Pillco’s current workload.
Still, it had been a good trip and Samir had the weekend to plan the future development of the company.
Sunanda Rakhija, Production Director at Pilloc, was called into the Board meeting on the Monday morning. “Its like this, Sunanda”, said Samir. “We need the new designs in a matter of weeks and they have to be computer generated to fit straight into our new machinery. Our people haven’t been trained on them yet so we will have to subcontract this to some freelance designers who specialize in this field. They will do the design for us and
MAKING FRIENDS AT PILLCO
Samir Sethi, the Managing Director of Pillco, a Mumbai based textile manufacturer, was quite pleased with himself. It was Friday afternoon and his flight from Tokyo was just about to land at Mumbai. In conjuction with his Sales Director, Aman Kalra, he had just returned from Japan where he managed to successfully complete negotiations on a Rs. 25 million order from a Japanese folfing manufacturer, Kokuna. The order was for the manufacture of a new range of golf seaters and accessories and was the biggest single order that the company had dealt in the last five-years history. They had come up against stiff competition from other sportswear manufacturers in India and Japan.
To secure the order, Pillco had to promise delivery of the first batch of newly desgined golf wear within six weeks and bulk order shipments of 10,000 pullovers every two months. The created a problem. At maximum production, Pillco could only manufacture and meet these order requirements by dropping 80% of its ongoing business. It also meant that three new computer controlled manufacturing machines and a new computer aided design system would be put to work to come up with the new style and design to manufacture the sweaters. These had been recently purchased at great expense. The problem was who would operate the machinery and design systems to meet the order requirements, and what to do with Pillco’s current workload.
Still, it had been a good trip and Samir had the weekend to plan the future development of the company.
Sunanda Rakhija, Production Director at Pilloc, was called into the Board meeting on the Monday morning. “Its like this, Sunanda”, said Samir. “We need the new designs in a matter of weeks and they have to be computer generated to fit straight into our new machinery. Our people haven’t been trained on them yet so we will have to subcontract this to some freelance designers who specialize in this field. They will do the design for us and