Soup King Executive Summary

Our company, Soup King, provides 10 oz. tomato soup cans to large retail grocery chains. I have prepared an operation and supply chain strategic plan to continue improving the company, while achieving upper-management objectives for the future. I look to expand the company’s growth while reducing operating expenses, but at the same time ensuring the end-consumer has received a satisfactory product.

An objective for upper-management is expanding into China. Expanding into new markets will increase our products’ exposure, so we need to respond by addressing capacity planning. Since our product is perishable, it is critical we follow a just-in-time inventory approach. This will help reduce overhead cost such as storage and lower capital invested in inventory. As orders are placed, we will begin the make-to-order process to produce our soup with less wasted resources. Since Soup King is a capital

With management’s goal of expanding our product offerings, I would suggest implementing the sale of a different size of our tomato soup cans that can meet the needs of our customers. Since many of the existing inputs are interchangeable, this will help reduce the development cost of our new product offering. With this new direction, we would need to address the advantages and disadvantages to opening up a new product line to accommodate this new product. If we manufactured both sizes on the same line, even with the use of ERP, there will still be downtime involved from switching the manufacturing line to use different size cans. If there are major gaps forecasted between our production capabilities and the customer demand, it would be wise to consider opening a new production line. If Soup King can generate more revenue from opening a new production line, and the automation process is solely fixed to produce our new size can of soup, we need to proceed with this addition to our manufacturing