Allentown Materials Corp: The Electronic Products Division Analysis

Allentown Materials Corp was competing through product differentiation and growing profitably without substantial competitive pressures through premium prices of government military contracts and specialized products for OEMs as a result of its strong R&D division for over a hundred years. But in late 1980’s, as the demands of the industry began to change to a fast paced price sensitive computer, telecommunications and consumer electronics commercial market, pressures from the dynamic new market required Allentown to be a lower cost producer to be competitive. EDP, the manufacturing division of Allentown just previously went through a restructuring of their business units by their new leader Don Rogers and lack of synergy between the business units in the development of new product extensions was threatening the growth and profitability of EPD and Allentown as a whole.

Analysis of problems at EDP

After analysis of all the divisions, I have identified their key issues as follows:

1. Don Rogers is not utilizing an effective style of leadership as it appears he does not have control of the division. He is more interested in the specifics of new products but not as much in the process of getting the divisions to synergize and ensure that the products are developed and sold. He is also not involved enough in the decision making and management of new product development and is not holding anyone accountable for their in-actions.

2. There are overlaps in the responsibilities of the new functional units which are causing a lot of finger pointing and disputes among the business units as well as prolonging the process of new product development unnecessarily.

3. The marketing unit is overwhelmed by the responsibility of building strategies for forecasting and development of new products without any cooperation from the other business units or senior management. They are not