Polaroid Case

a) Decide on a program/initiative that you think would be worthy of the team creating. Describe the program/initiative.

By not going through the regular intermediaries that the competitors use will cause problems for the distribution factor. By going through their intermediaries it will be provided by a trusted network where the salespeople that Richard hires might cause a channel conflict and it will fail.

Healthcare facilities are dealing with tremendous overflow of products due to reasons like expiring dates, over ordering, facilities are no longer using because of doctors’ choices, even hospital pricing contracts ending. I think something has to happen to improve the cost and efficiency of distribution strategies.

The next aspect that we looked at is about distribution for our product. The first thing we did was layout what our DC process would look like. The first step in this process is receiving the order from our supplier, in this case it will be McKee Foods from Collegedale, Tennessee, and correctly storing our shipment. We have chosen to use random storage for our retail inventory because it will minimize honeycombing and use the space of our DC more efficiently. We think random storage will work well with our product because even if other products are present in the DC, it will be hard to pick the wrong item considering it is not hard to distinguish between different snack foods. In the case of technology items, like computers or cameras, it may be hard to tell the difference between items because a lot of the differences are software based and are located inside the item itself. Our direct to consumer inventory will have specific storage. Our consumer inventory makes up only 7.5% of our total inventory and we want to have a specific location within the DC where these orders will be picked. Since we are using an integrated fulfillment method there will be two different shipping options, either direct-to-consumer or retail. Depending on which type of order it is, the product will be assigned to a different truck and

b) To find ways of countering this negative trend and pass our recommendations onto the relevant people.

Polaroid Corporation, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a company marketed a wide variety of instant photographic products for consumers and industries. After the deregulation of US motor industry consolidation of the warehouses in US took place, which resulted in an improved service level and reduced costs. Overwhelmed by the consolidation results, the management wanted to consolidate the subsidiaries’ warehouses in the Europe to a direct distribution.

a. Your approach to addressing the problem at hand (for example, specify the systems development life cycle or whatever approach you plan on taking).

c. If you were the CIO, what would you have done differently to protect all stakeholders?

Both “A Brief Timeline of the Polaroid” and the article, “The Story of the Death (and Rebirth) of Polaroid Film” by Harry McCracken explain the troubled times and the redemption of the technology in the modern era. In 2001, the Polaroid Company had to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring, many thought this would be the end of Polaroid. However, on July 31, 2002 the Polaroid Corporation was purchased by One Equity Partners who created a new and improved company that launched the new era of Polaroid (A Brief Timeline of Polaroid 2017). Under this new ownership, Polaroid was taken into an extreme new direction. By the year 2008, Polaroid began to discontinue many of their beloved products including instant film! Instant film was “a product that seemed pretty obsolete in the digital age….except it wasn’t obsolete at all” (The Story of the Death (and Rebirth) of Polaroid Film 2012). When this change occurred, more people became invested in Polaroid than ever, individuals gathered together and started the ‘Impossible Project’ which would sell new film for Polaroids. The impossible project has expanded over the years, and Polaroid Corporation has taken notice of the demand for instant photography Polaroid cameras. Polaroid has reemerged as a fun, expressive hobby for people of the modern era that more and more people are continuing to discover. It has become such a fad that consumers can even buy vintage Polaroid cameras and new film from popular stores such as Urban Outfitters. If anything, Polaroid is far from being dead in 2017 because of the movements and interest in instant photography that have come with the era of self commemoration and social media (The Story of the Death (and Rebirth) of Polaroid Film

distribution. I like the idea. I am not a fan of the free, and of the PoS although I get the reasoning behind it. I would highly suggest keeping an eye on this project. It

Polaris needs to organize their firms differently to give assistance to business abroad, they also need to make their rules and regulation, the vision, and the goals of the company clear that it is more comprehensible to the employees so they can go by and do things by those goals, mission, and rules. Polaris also needs to make younger people their target market, instead of targeting older people, like the baby boomers. Targeting younger generation will allow them succeed more and grow as a business. If they keep pursuing the baby boomers as their target market the company will not grow. If they pursue younger generation, it will be of good use for the company in the Long run.

Distribution network is the operational hinge we should build around. Distribution affects everything from delivery tracking to sales strategy. The main goal is to improve the

Kodak and Polaroid are both extremely different firms. Polaroid has only one specialization and that is the instant photo market. Kodak on the other hand has reaches in all photo related industries. Kodak had high fixed costs due to their in-house production while Polaroid opted to be flexible and loose by subcontracting most of its production facilities. Therefore, Kodak had to reach a certain level of market volume in order to break even and become profitable. Polaroid, on the other hand, had huge R&D cost that was an impediment to break-even point. This difference in strategy was an incentive that gave Kodak its reasoning for aggressive maneuvers in the market to weed out Polaroid. It wanted its economies of scale to be

In North America, Loctite’s distribution strategy is selective, only allowing its products to be carried by two to three distributors in the same market. The industrial distributors are narrowed into 12 regions overseen by President of the company. This structure allowed Loctite to focus on its distributors and their strategies while giving the customer a choice of three distributors to purchase from. Using this structure, Loctite can focus more of its attention on providing a superior level of service to its customers, adding more value to its products. Although this structure limits Loctite’s presence in market outlets, by using two or

There are procedures that would have to be adapted in implementing a business relationship with the distributors. There has to be a specific agreement that both parties should follow.