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<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Regional Asia-Pacific Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>Worldwide Equipment Ltd. is one of the world's largest manufacturers of heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment. The Beijing regional sales manager has just heard that the sales performance of his office ranked the lowest among the sales offices in China. The sales Beijing force will not receive their year-end bonus unless the situation can be turned around quickly. He must determine whether the sales management process or a recent new hire on the sales force, whose hiring was strongly suggested by the manager's boss, are to blame for the poor sales performance and how to keep the situation from recurring.

Salco (China) is a global manufacturer of burners for hot-water boilers and industrial furnaces and ovens. The company has recently hired a new operations manager for their plant in China whose mandate is to improve the efficiency of the Beijing office, to eliminate Salco's Chinese distributors' poaching behavior and to elevate Salco's brand equity in the Chinese market. After implementation, the initiative to eliminate distributors' poaching had failed and the company's operations manager must determine why this initiative failed and prepare a report for senior management.

Excel spreadsheet for frontier analysis. Requires built in macro. Suggested fix prepared by a student is also available (product 7B01N08) should also be used as there is no guarantee the software will work.

To be used with Excel spreadsheet (5B01N08), due to the spreadsheets reliance on a built-in macro, the program may not work properly depending on the system used. This list of fixes may help in correcting some of the problems.

Powerpoint presentation for product 9B02C042.

Zhongda Optical Cable Engineering Company is a small company that provides optical cable engineering services to contractors who are installing intranet applications in a province in China. As an early entrant in the market and a high quality service provider, the company had been able to charge premium prices, however, the market has changed. There are now many competitors who provide similar services. Furthermore, contractors - and sometimes end-users - were learning how to do Zhongda's major task, optical cable welding, for themselves. Zhongda has three options: aggressively target end-user accounts; retreat from cable engineering services and focus on distributing cable components or start manufacturing optical cable welding machines. None of these is a perfect match for Zhongda's capabilities, but the prospects for continued prosperity in its current role are bleak.

This technical note describes many of the issues, techniques and resources available in the field of shelf space management in the early 2000s. It assumes basic familiarity with category management and merchandising techniques.

Hayward & Guzman researches and develops contact lens products and has recently developed a new disposable contact lens. Two segments with different price sensitivity have been identified. In order to reach these segments, the products will need to be packaged and sold differently. A marketing representative for Hayward & Guzman must develop a marketing mix for the two segments and determine pricing for each product.

John McCulloch takes a job as assistant general manager at a meat packing plant. After a short time in the job, he discovers it was nothing like he expected, worker safety is constantly compromised, the safety of the public from consuming tainted food is compromised and everything is subordinated to the production line's constant movement. He must decide whether or not he will stay with the company.

Orion Bus Industries is a manufacturer of transit buses that are purchased by transit authorities across North America. The majority of Orion's sales are made through competitive bidding processes. The company's goal is to either increase margins while maintaining sales levels or to increase the total volume of sales. The chief executive officer would like to know whether historical contract bidding data can be used to improve the success of future bids for bus contracts.

Jonathon Elderslie, recently retired after running his own company for 30 years, must decide what questions he should ask before deciding whether to join the board of directors of a publicly traded company. While flattered by the invitation, he has some concerns given the current climate of concern about corporate governance and, more specifically, the views about the role of a director expressed by one of his business acquaintances.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Emerging Chinese Global Competitors, EFMD Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>The Wahaha Hangzhou Group Co. Ltd. is one of China's largest soft-drink producers. One of the company's products, Future Cola, was launched a few years ago to compete with Coca Cola and PepsiCo and has made significant progress in the soft-drink markets that were developed by these cola giants. The issue now is to maintain the momentum of growth in the face of major competition from the giant multinationals, and to achieve its goal of dominant market share.

Jindi Enterprises is a manufacturer of heat exchanger units for residential and commercial markets in China. Recently, the company's top sales representative, who is also the sales manager for one of the company's provincial offices, quit and joined a competitor. A replacement must be found, however, a delay in choosing a strategic direction is seriously complicating the hiring decision. The chief executive officer must determine the corporate strategy and ensure that the hiring strategy reflects these changes. Learning objectives include understanding that corporate strategy and sales hiring and selection strategy are inter-related and must be integrated, that hiring criteria may have to change to reflect strategy changes, and that sales and sales management practices in emerging markets can be different than those in mature markets.

AlarmForce Industries Inc. is a developer and sales provider of home security systems with offices throughout Canada. Since the company's inception, it had become one of the leaders in the Canadian home security market and had established a reputation for being a technological innovator in the industry. The president and chief executive officer of the company must decide whether or not to launch their new product, AlarmFog, which the president believed represented the future of the home security market. The case focuses on past strategic decisions made by the company in differentiating itself in a mature market. The potential folly of making tactical product launch decisions without a solid analysis of underlying strategic issues can be discussed.

An investor is considering investing in Air Canada bonds after reading an article on the attractiveness of the bonds. Trading at US$0.80 on the dollar, the bonds are yielding approximately 14 per cent. The investor must conduct some financial analysis on her own to assess whether the company's financial position has improved or deteriorated since a bond rating downgrade eight months ago. She must also evaluate how off-balance sheet operating leases would affect the analysis. The case illustrates how financial statement users can use lease disclosures to restate financial statements to fully reflect liability arising from operating leases.

A policy advisor in the Ministry of Industry, working on a summer job, has received an offer from the Minister of Industry to stay in his current position for another year, and to pay for his MBA degree at the end of it. He must decide whether to accept this offer, or leave as planned to continue his studies. He must consider whether short-term financial gain outweighs long-term career objectives.

North American Motors is a large automobile manufacturer. The facility engineer for a particular assembly plant has to decide what to recommend concerning a new oven. The current oven, used to remove excess paint from various materials handling equipment in the plant's painting operations, did not clean the equipment adequately. The engineer, who has been in the position for only a short time, must analyse the situation both quantitatively and qualitatively before reporting to the plant engineering manager.

The health and fitness trend that started in the 1980s and became a staple of American lifestyle in the 1990s created numerous opportunities for new firms to introduce niche products. The founder of No Pudge! Brownies worked with a consultant to develop a fat-free brownie mix. She then designed a lean organization where production, distribution and Internet orders were all outsourced. Immediately she is faced with her Achilles heel, the slotting fees required by supermarkets to obtain shelf space. After two years of negotiating with supermarkets, an important grocery chain finally agrees to carry her product without any slotting fees. By 1997 sales totaled a meager $250,000. Aggressive lobbying with the National Food Distributors Association and a multi-pronged strategy for dealing with slotting eventually pushed sales above the $2 million mark. No Pudge! is at a major decision point. New growth opportunities, such as muffin mix and fast-food distribution of pre-made brownies are abundant. Slotting continues to be a source of frustration for the firm, and No Pudge! is now on the radar screen as a possible acquisition target by major food purveyors.

The vice-president of a venture capital fund is reviewing the due diligence package on a deal that involved financing the merger of two operating companies. He must assess the merits of the deal and prepare a term sheet outlining a proposed financing package for one of the potential investors.

Omega Air Charters is an air transportation company that provides service to the global mining industry. The company has negotiated a contract with a group of European mining companies that requires Omega Air to provide air service in Azerbaijan - once part of the former Soviet Union. Based on the agreement made with the country, the company must staff the operation with Azerbaijan pilots and engineers who resent a western corporation operating western aircraft in their country. The executive vice-president must resolve this issue and gain the trust of the pilots and engineers if this project is to succeed.