Dell Computer is maintained and increased their competitive advantage. They want to maintain a low cost position to maximize the value passed on to customers, while driving costs lower and lower. They also want to drive aggressive pricing and profitability gain share. Dell wants to always put customers first and remain aggressive about driving improved customer value across all Dell business. Employee support of Product Leadership, Customer Experience, and Globalization is also important to the company. They want to have the best product in the marketplace and gain as much share in the market as possible. One way of achieving this would be to drive more than two-thirds of their sales and service transactions online.
Dell Computer's strategies are built around several key elements: build-to-order manufacturing, mass customization, partnerships with suppliers, just-in-time inventories, direct sales, market segmentation, customer service, and extensive information sharing with both supply partners and customers. With build-to-order manufacturing, Dell built its computers, workstations, and servers to order based on the needs of their customers. The orders were directed to the nearest factory. They reorganized plants and shifted to "cell manufacturing" whereby a team of workers assemble one PC rather than typical assembly line production. The result of this change was that there was no-in-house stock of finished goods inventories and they did not have to wait for resellers to clear inventories before new models could be pushed into the marketplace.
The next strategy I'll discuss is Dell's partnerships with its suppliers. They partnered with reputable suppliers of PC parts and components rather than to integrate backward and get into parts and components manufacturing on their own. They decided that they would partner with as few outside vendors as possible and that they would stay with those vendors as long as they maintained their