Perdue Farms Inc.: Responding to 21st Century Challenges

PERDUE FARMS INC.: RESPONDING TO 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES

From the beginning in 1920 Perdue Farms main focus has been on producing high quality chicken products. This is further reinforced in their quality policy and promise to customers. Over the years Perdue Farms management structure has been centralised with management decisions being made by Frank Perdue himself or senior executives whom he trusted. Decentralisation was encouraged from 1991 onwards to increase employee involvement and to aid in the enhancement of the company's productivity. Marketing of Perdue Farm products in the beginning was nonexistent as chicken was sold to butcher shops and groceries as a commodity with customers being unaware of the growing or processing firm. Frank saw the opportunity to increase profits through the differentiation of his products through branding. The challenge for Perdue Farms today is to create a unified marketing theme to market a wide variety of products both fresh meat and fully prepared and frozen products to a wide variety of customers including retail, food service and international buyers. Perdue Farms operations are of a total control vertical integration where the company controls each and every process in both growing and processing their products. Perdue Farms research and development is highly important to the organisation whom conduct more research than all competitors combined to continually ensure they are providing a high quality product that is superior to competitors as well as continuing to reduce cost of production through innovative ideas, training and time management strategies. Many environmental issues are faced by Perdue Farms including depositing of carcasses which they have developed composting systems that reduce the decomposition rate. Many other challenges are faced by poultry processors being aware of OH&S and government policies are highly important. Logistical systems in the poultry industry