Athletic Knit Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Athletic Knit Case Solution

Question 1

Discuss the mission and strategy of Athletic Knit and your opinion of where their competitive advantage lies.

The mission of Athletic Knit Company was to provide high quality services and the high quality sportswear to its customers. The company is basically a family run business and the founders current Vice president of the company, Daniel Sliwin and his brother David have both worked hard over the years to strive the business, boost its growth and maintain the values of their grandfather.

athletic knit case study solution

The strategy of the company has been to maintain bigger orders from the high value customers and in order to attract such orders the two brothers have worked hard to aggressively increase the product lines of Athletic Knit Company. Both of them have also focused more on planning and scheduling despite the fact that the business was basically a family run business.
The competitive advantage of the company lied in the speed of the delivery of the final products. Athletic Knit Company had achieved a reputation in the market of quick deliveries by replenishing and stocking inventories faster as compared to the competitors of the company. This was the reason due to which the management of the company had always emphasized upon maintaining excess inventory in order to meet the increased demand especially during the peak business seasons and that is why they focused more robustly on the inventory controls within the company. Therefore, the speed of the delivery was the core area where the competitive advantage of the company lied.

Question 2

Identify the capacity issues at Athletic Knit.

There were a range of capacity issues that were being faced by the company. Moreover, there were stock outs occurring for the products of the company each year which were resulting in much higher costs of obsolescence for the company. The reason for this was that the company was maintaining higher quantity of inventory and it was replenishing on the basis of the minimum order quantity model of 360 units.

The management of Athletic Knit Company was unable to determine the most optimal and the economic level of the inventory for each of the season and the costs of operations and holding the inventory were excessively high due to the company’s policy of carrying excess inventory due to the minimum order quantity policy. Other factors which were contributing to the capacity issues at Athletic Knit Company were the poor layout of the plant. Moreover, the company had a total of 11 plants however, the current operational plants were just 9 and the remaining 2 plants were unused as they required repairing.

Lastly, another factor contributing to the capacity issues of Athletic Knit Company was the management’s reliance of the word of mouth of the retailers of the company to advertise the products and the services of the company. This might also be the reason impacting upon the demand of the company’s products and thus impacting the capacity planning of Athletic Knit Company.............

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Athletic Knit Harvard Case Solution & Analysis