Question

Do you have a sample of Business Improvement plan? Any tips? I need to write 6-8 pages Improvement plan for Kodak company?

Answer 1

Introduction

This assignment is all about the quality and its implementation in the firm. The researcher has chosen Eastman Kodak company and he described the impact of quality on the operations and functions of the company.

The company bears the name of its founder, George Eastman, who became interested in photography during the late 1870s while planning a vacation from his job as a bank clerk in Rochester, New York. Taking a coworker's suggestion to make a photographic record of his intended trip to Santo Domingo, the 24-year-old Eastman soon found that the camera, film, and wet-plate-developing chemicals and equipment he had purchased were far too bulky. Instead of following through with his original vacation plans, Eastman spent the time studying how to make photography more convenient. He discovered a description of a dry-plate process that was being used by British photographers. He tried to replicate this process in his mother's kitchen at night after work.

After three years Eastman produced a dry glass plate with which he was satisfied. In 1880 he obtained a U.S. patent for the dry plate and for a machine for preparing many plates at one time, and he started manufacturing dry plates for sale to photographers. Henry A. Strong, a local businessman impressed by Eastman's work, joined him on January 1, 1881, to form the Eastman Dry Plate Company. Eastman left his position at the bank later that year to give his complete attention to the new company.

Chapter 2

Quality Innovation Process of Eastman Kodak

As a CEO of the Eastman Kodak, I have analyzed the problem areas of the company and then frequently I have discussed the issues like the global recession of the company, with the management. The combined decision making is very vital for the better performance of the company. As the main issue area of the Eastman Kodak is its low profit margin and share price due to the recession, therefore it is the need of the hour to introduce a well organized innovation process of the Eastman Kodak. For this purpose I have described the following innovation process of the Eastman Kodak to solve out the problem of the Eastman Kodak. The innovation process of the Eastman Kodak consists of the following key factors.

2.1 Mission of the Eastman Kodak

2.2 Vision of Eastman Kodak

The explanation of these key factors of the innovation process is as follow

Mission of the Eastman Kodak

The mission statement is designed to pull together an organization's vision, values and strategy. Mission statement tells the broad purpose of the operation. It gives a frame work into which specific objectives and project will fit.

Kodak has plan to grow more rapidly than its competitors by providing customers with the solutions they need to capture, store, process, output and communicate images. anywhere, anytime. We will derive our competitive advantage by delivering differentiated, cost-effective solutions. Including consumables, hardware, software, systems and services. quickly and with flawless quality. All this is thanks to our diverse team of energetic, results-oriented employees with the world-class talent and skills necessary to sustain Kodak as the world leader in imaging.

When the company will provide the better and innovative products and services to its customers, then it will not only maintain its current customers but also the new potential customer and business will be started to increase the market share and share price of the Eastman Kodak. However Eastman Kodak is focusing on its short term mission at the moment i.e. to increase its share price and to overcome the recession problems. http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/careers/why/newvaluesmission.jhtml?pq-path=2217/923/10669/10677

Vision of Eastman Kodak

A vision statement can be seen as a sense of purpose that draws together all parts of an organization's efforts. The vision statement of the Eastman Kodak is

Eastman Kodak Company is to make measurable improvements in the health, safety and environmental aspects of our products, services and operations - and to do so continually.

"To realize this vision, all Kodak operations and employees around the world work together to protect the quality of the environment and the health and safety of our employees, customers, and neighbors. As a strategic framework to keep us on the path to our goals, we have established a company Health, Safety and Environmental Policy and Guiding Principles based on a series of Corporate Responsibility Principles". http://wwwuk.kodak.com/US/en/corp/HSE/VisionStrategy.jhtml?pq-path=7285

Chapter 3

3.0 Formulation of Innovation Strategies

"Innovation is the conversion of new knowledge into new products and services. Innovation is about creating value and increasing productivity, and therefore growing your business" http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/innovation_mgmt_main.html

These innovation strategies will provide help to the company to increase its profit, market share, and earning per share as compared to its competitors. The innovation strategies of the Eastman Kodak include the following sub- innovative strategies.

3.1 Innovative enterprise strategies

3.2 Innovative corporate growth strategies

3.3 Innovative venture Strategies

3.4 Innovative competitive strategies

These innovation strategies that will provide a basic infrastructure to CEO of the company and the details of these innovation strategies are as follow.

3.1 Innovative enterprise strategies

The innovative enterprise strategies provide the sustainable competitive advantage to the company. Successful companies focus their efforts strategically all over the world. The Eastman Kodak Company should set a stretch exercise, not a fit exercise. To meet and exceed customer satisfaction, the whole team of the Eastman Kodak needs to follow an overall organizational strategy. For this purpose, the CEO will interact with my management that they may formulate that strategy for the enterprise which adds value for the targeted customers over the long run by consistently meeting their needs better than the competitors of the Eastman Kodak. The innovative enterprise strategies will provide the way to the Eastman Kodak to orient itself towards the market in which it operates and toward the other companies in the market place against which it competes.

The innovation strategies will provide the following advantages to Eastman Kodak .

Provide the sources of competitive advantages to the Eastman Kodak.

Provide the secure position to the company to maintain its sustainability among the competitors.

Describe the key strategic priorities of the company.

3.2 Innovative corporate growth strategies

"Innovative corporate growth strategy is a practical approach to achieving top-line growth and bottom-line results".

http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Outlook/By_Subject/Innovation/OutlookPOVMovingPerformance.htm

To achieve and sustain high performance, innovation must move beyond chance. The best companies put in place the structures, processes and conditions that increase the likelihood that innovation will occur over the long run. The CEO of the company will implement the innovative growth strategy in addition with efficient technology strategy and quick speed of delivering the products into the market. The corporate growth strategies depend upon the knowledge, not upon the hardware.

The innovative corporate growth strategy will help the CEO and the management to review or reformed their corporate policy and empower the management of the corporate. For this purpose, the company can use the lean six sigma approach because Lean Six Sigma reach back to the time when the greatest pressure for quality and speed are on manufacturing. Six Sigma emphasizes the need to recognize opportunities and eliminates defects as defined by the customers.

The innovative growth strategies of the Eastman Kodak can eliminate its global recession as these strategies focus on the business growth by increasing the customer added values. Following are the key variables and advantages of the innovative corporate growth strategies.

Increase in customer added value

Managing innovation and software key skills together exploitation

New highly disaggregated business units or subsidiaries will form

Global outsourcing and service trading on huge scale

The success of the corporate lies in understanding, integration and ability to manage intellectual, technical and innovative resources.

3.3 Innovative venture Strategies

The innovative venture strategies are those strategies which help an organization to make its alliance or ventures in whole business or some of the business' units. The Eastman Kodak Company can make its venture or alliance within its weaker continents and markets. For this purpose, the CEO of the company will try to make a joint venture of the Eastman Kodak with any other company related to its industry. The profit margins of the Eastman Kodak Company are already under pressure at the moment and there is possibility that the joint venture can be suitable for the company and the loss or failure of the business in these continents could be recovered. (Jane Henry & David Mayle, 2nd edition)

The innovative venture strategies can be helpful for Eastman Kodak to provide competitive advantage and for this purpose the shareholder value need sustainable competitive advantage, which distinguish the company from its competitors, and provide positive economic benefits Eastman Kodak can get competitive advantage and differentiation by identifying new products and services, starting from core capabilities within the companies who have succeeded to generate new markets. Innovative venture strategies would be resulted in the better core competencies for the company and its share price in its less profitable continents may increase.

3.4 Innovative competitive strategies

Eastman Kodak can overcome the major problem of its global business recession by formulating and implementing the innovative competitive strategies. The market challenger strategies can be useful in the theme of implementing innovative competitive strategies. Many market challengers have gained ground or even overtaken the leader. For this purpose, Eastman Kodak should follow the market challenging techniques of some well reputed companies.

Example of competitive strategies

Toyota is producing more than General Motors and British Airways flies more international passengers than the former leader, Pan Am, did in its heyday. Airbus delivers more aircraft than Boeing. Challengers like Airbus set high aspirations, leveraging their resources while the market leader often runs the business as usual.

A market challenger must first define its strategic objectives and its most aim should be to increase the market share. Same like Toyota, Eastman Kodak can attack its market leader in its low profit regions, but this may be risky for Eastman Kodak and can be resulted in the favor of Eastman Kodak if the leader is not analyzing the challenger's trend and desires. (Philip Kotler, 12th edition)

Chapter 4

Opportunities to improve competitiveness of Eastman Kodak

Following are the opportunities to improve the competitiveness of the Eastman Kodak Company 4.1 By Six Sigma

The management of the Eastman Kodak Company can improve its competitiveness within its leadership. The leadership of the Eastman Kodak Company can be increased by introducing the innovative and competitive briefing. For this purpose, the approach of Six Sigma is very useful. Six Sigma is a proactive means of achieving in all business processes and measure the performance or improvement in the economic profit. Six Sigma is a methodology for pursuing continuous quality improvement and reduce inherent variability. This approach develops the insights of customer expectations in the personality of the leaders of the company. The leaders of the Eastman Kodak can implement the basic methodology of Six Sigma by choosing right process for the business decisions within Eastman Kodak. Six sigma provides common goals to the leaders and approaches to problem solving within the company. The leaders of Eastman Kodak can develop a transferable knowledge to al levels of employees and the moral of the employees will enhance which will be better for the efficiency of the company and it can compete with its competitors in an appropriate manner. Six sigma approach is the most effective way to increase the performance of the business of Eastman Kodak and its customer quality. http://www.pstc.org/papers/pdfs/Osten.pdf

4.2 IMPROVEMENTS BY TACIT AND EXPLICIT INNOVATION

The performance and quality of the Eastman Kodak products can be increased by implementing the tacit and explicit innovation. Tacit knowledge underlies many competitive capabilities. Tacit knowledge with innovative styles can provide a deeper insight to the management and CEO into the operations and practices of the company. The company should follow the innovative tacit knowledge which includes relationship, norms, values and standard operating procedures. Managing tacit knowledge is a significant challenge in the business world and it requires more than mere awareness of barriers. Managers and innovation team leaders can use tacit knowledge to aid convergent thinking by creating guiding visions and concepts for teams involved in innovation.

The Eastman Kodak Company can improve its performance, share price and market share within its regional markets by introducing the techniques of innovation within its explicit knowledge. As innovation is the first application of knowledge in practical use. The environment of the Eastman Kodak should be capable to acquire global knowledge. The company should focus to get knowledge into use rather than just creating the knowledge. The company can implement its innovative explicit knowledge within its products as well as services for the better competitiveness into the local and global markets.

http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/239735/DahlmanInnovationinAfrica.pdf

4.3 IMPROVEMENTS IN DEVELOPING GREATER CREATIVITY

Creativity means that systems are able to self-evolve without any external intervention. Then we could define a system as creative in case it is able to evolve in a not known, not predetermined and not definable way. In other words it is not possible to foresee system's behavior just considering its input. The Eastman Kodak Company can improve its creativity by introducing and creating the innovative characteristics in the individuals and entire organization to attain the advantage over its competitors in its local and global markets. The following table is showing the creativity of the individuals and the entire organization with respect to their low and high parameters and factors of creativity.

Individual creativity

Low

High

Organizational creativity

high

Organizations based on continuous development, on systematic research of efficiency

Successful organizations

High rate of innovations

low

Few innovations, just imitations

Not effective organizations.

Low rate of innovations, sometimes radical, based on entrepreneurial spirit of individuals

http://www.diegm.uniud.it/create/Handbook/management/1_2OrganizationalCreativity2.htm

4.4 IMPROVEMENT IN THE CULTURE OF THE COMPANY

The culture of the Eastman Kodak has leadership and loyalty for employees. The previous CEO of the has build up a unique organizational culture for the Eastman Kodak Company in which the company is learned from its mistakes, and the innovative growth of the company is made by developing the strong R&D environment in the company.

The CEO of Eastman Kodak should introduce the innovative and organizational developed culture in the organizational which would make innovative and flexible change bearing organization.

The new CEO and the management must be devoted to offer a strong and well organized cultural environment in the Eastman Kodak where all employees flourish, and Human Resource policies, worker instruction and senior leadership shore up this goal. The visualization of the company must be empower and modern ideas creation for the entire organization.

An comprehensive culture for the Eastman Kodak can be build on the Human Resources Principles for the purpose to value the self-esteem and significance of individuals, promote the proposals of each employee, challenge character capabilities and offer identical chance.

Example

The management of Eastman Kodak wants to create an Informal Information System which may share the information with the employees and get a feedback from them. For this purpose the management develops an Informal information System and that system tells us the number of people who want to share the information, the amount of information to share, and the amount of the time available for sharing this information. This system shows that the key factor that, how much interest everyone has in using mail system to share information and this level of interest then influences how many people share information and how much time they spend doing it. The diagrammatic representation of that system is as follow;

Information

People Time

Information

Interest in sharing information

(The Informal Information System by Virginia Anderson & Lauren Johnson)

According to Stephen P. Robbins and Mary Coulter, organizational culture is a system of shared meaning and beliefs held by organizational members that determines, in large degree, how employees act.

Management of Eastman Kodak can build a strong organizational culture in terms of developing work specialization, departmentalization, and chain of command, span of control, decentralization and formalization in the environment of the company. Management of the Eastman Kodak can alter one or more of these structural commands, e.g. the departmental responsibilities of the Eastman Kodak could be combined, organizational level eliminated, or span of control widened to make Eastman Kodak flatter and less bureaucratic. The management of Eastman Kodak can increase the decentralization of power to make its decision making faster.

4.5 IMPROVEMENTS IN MARKET SHARE AND CORE COMPETENCIES

"The management of Eastman Kodak should focus on its weak areas and revise its planning and strategy in its low profitable continents such as Europe. More the target focus results more the sophisticated and customized the Eastman Kodak will be".

(David L. Kurtz 2nd edition)

In this era of technology, globalization and progression, all the entities of Supply Chain Management, customers, consumers etc, want comfort and convenience. Eastman Kodak is providing all these facilities up to the satisfaction of its Supply Chain, but the important thing is the consistency in providing the convenience to all of its Supply Chain Management, buyers, consumers, customers and prospected customers. The factor of handiness can give the superior edge to the Eastman Kodak in the development of its market share Eastman Kodak should be convenience provider in every aspect of its competencies such as dividends providing, salaries of employees, environment friendly, health and safety laws, internal and outside environment of the company, providing services to the consumers and customers, dealing with its suppliers, competitions among its competitors. By doing all of these ethical issues of convenience over all the continents, the global image of the Eastman Kodak will be enhanced and the market share and core competencies of the company will increase.

Customers want to contact what they wish for and who they wish for anytime, anywhere from anyplace. Eastman Kodak should focus on the convergence oriented and this convergence can be attained by concentrating the current and potential customers. The management and the new CEO must focus on this convergence factor by giving equally attention to the markets of all the regions. "Innovation, horizontal and vertical growth in all the continents can be the key tools to attaining the concentration of the key customers and business groups in the scenario of the globalization".

The market share and share price of the Eastman Kodak can be increased by strong advertising campaigns. For this purpose, the company should use every major medium to deliver their message to the customers. The suitable channels of advertising for the Eastman Kodak could be television, internet, magazines, newspapers, carrier bags and billboards. When people listen and view the strong advertising of any product, then they buy the product and if the product or service matches their expectation, then they becomes the regular consumer of that product and the psyche of those consumers turned into their loyalty with that product or service.

Chapter 5

5.0 SWOT Analysis

5.1 Strengths

Kodak is the first company who developed first mega pixel electronic image sensor with 1.4 million pixels

Kodak ahs launched a series of diversification initiatives in imaging and life sciences with several new imaging ventures

Kodak got a leading position in commercial imaging system that scanned, edited and prepare images for printing

Kodak has launched a number of new products for electronic publishing, scanning and editing for the printing and publishing industry, including image link.

Kodak has become a leader in image storage and retrieval systems

Its information system provided computer-assisted storage and retrieval of microfilm image

Kodak has a range of data storage devices

Kodak is supplying batteries and videocassettes with the joint venture of Matsushita

Kodak has acquired IBM's copier services business

5.2 Weaknesses

Kodak has been facing problems in providing the image technology to its customers

The brutal profit margins in some markets resulted by the Kodak's lack of experience with collapse of the photographic business.

Kodak has a lack of strategies to differ its digital business from its traditional business

5.3 Opportunities

With the help of its digital business, its revenue will be grown

Its new digital imaging can give it edge over its competitors

Kodak can attain maximum profit by providing mass production at low cost

Can foster growth and development through continuing research

Reinvesting profits to build and extend the business

5.4 Threats

Different and complicated market of digital imaging

Strong array of competitors

Still grave doubts are existed about the Kodak's future capabilities

Chapter 6

6.0 CONCLUSION

Eastman Kodak is one of the most innovative company of the last century

Eastman Kodak has an evolving culture, but the parameters of that culture are traditional based

Eastman Kodak has supportive management environment and its has efficient TQM

The company has long term partnerships with its customers and suppliers

Eastman Kodak has slow growth in Europe and has less profit margin in these regions

Many senior managers left the company due to inefficient approach of previous CEO

The new CEO has introduced Quality based innovative strategies to increase the market share of the company

Strong advertising is adopted by the company to increase its sales revenue by the new CEO

The company is focusing on its better quality to attain potential business and customers

Chapter 7

7.0 RECOMMENDATIONS

The management of the company should rely on their own rules and regulations to strengthen the company rather than practicing the experiments

Eastman Kodak should keep its strategy to introduce the innovative and new product into the market

The Eastman Kodak should adopt the more quality based competitive strategy to become market leader in the Europe market

Eastman Kodak can adopt the market challenger strategy in the European market but this strategy is based on the high risk and high return involvement

The company can make alliance or venture with its leading competitor in its low profit regions and markets

The company should adopt low cost strategy to attain maximum market share

The benchmarking of the cost leader company can be chosen by the management of the company to attain more profit and business

The company should introduced the luxury products for status quo people

The company should involve all of its employees in the decision making and this technique will strengthen the company

The company should attract more people to invest in the company through its commercialization and advertising campaign.