How to create a spartan company

SPARTAN COMPANY The Spartan Company is a manufacturer of several industrial and consumer products, which include such items as maintenance equipment and supplies. They are located in East Lansing, Michigan and sell to distributors worldwide. Spartan distributors are independently owned and sell through dealers who in turn sell to end consumers. The Spartan Company was founded in the early 1900's and has maintained industry market leadership. During the past ten years, Spartan's market dominance has eroded. To counter competition, Spartan has recently revamped several aspects of their operations such as product development, sales training, expanded advertising, and special attention to cost reduction. The new president of the company, Charlie Change, recently hired an outside consulting firm to conduct a survey of distributors concerning their perceptions of operating relationships with Spartan (See Appendix I). In the survey, particular emphasis was placed on the distributors' perception of Spartan's customer service performance. This action was taken after the president had conversations with several long time distributors who were becoming unhappy with Spartan Company because they perceived the company as "becoming more difficult to deal with." After reviewing the survey results, Charlie Change became convinced that Spartan must develop a new logistics and customer service strategy and a plan to implement and support that strategy. To support the new strategy, Mr. Change is of the opinion that it will be necessary for the firm to investigate many aspects of its business situation and operations. The results of the survey are shown in Appendix 1. THE INDUSTRY G The industry includes the Spartan Company, Pacifico, Southeastern, Atlantic C.C, Wide Sky and Ivory Coast The basic product line of most companies is quite homogeneous among competitors. However,