Silver Ships Case Study

I. Introduction

Silver Ships, located in Theodore, Alabama (hereinafter referred to as “Silver Ships” or “the Company”), is a ship-building company specializing in customized military and workboats for the armed forces, the federal and municipal governments of the United States as well as for commercial clients. Silver Ships’ visionary leader and manager is its founder, Mike McCarty, who has run the Company with a close and personal attention to detail since he started it in 1985. Having developed Silver Ships to become a successful and profitable company through both organic growth and through acquisitions, McCarty is nearing an age to consider retirement within the next few years. Now is the time for Silver Ships to evaluate its current strategic position and one of the main issues is coming up with strategic solutions allowing the Company to maintain and improve its position in the market given the anticipated change of the leader.

Other issues are uncertain demand forecast, a possible decrease in future revenues due to general slowdown of the economy and finding a solution to mitigate this threat.

Product Line

Silver Ships’ products carry a strong name recognition for their quality which is largely due to McCarty’s hands-on management style. There are three basic types of boats that Silver Ships manufactures: the 20-65 foot Ambar series, that is a fast, oceangoing aluminum-hull with a hybrid air/foam (RHIB) collar; the 20-36 foot AM series with similar specifications as the Ambar series; and the SS series, that are mission-specific aluminum work boats that do not have the RHIB collar. All of these products are highly customized or semi-customized. Most importantly, however, the basic Ambar collar design is completely modular which decreases shipping and repair costs when a boat needs to be fixed.

Silver Ships’ core competencies are production of high quality boats and attention to details. However, the competitors’ products are also of high quality and are highly customized or semi-customized to each client’s specifications. Nevertheless, Silver Ships’ is able to get a competitive advantage through its distinctive competencies that are (i) the Company’s determination to consistently exceed customers’ expectations, (ii) its innovative culture and (iii) the operational efficiency due to use of technology. The combination of all these competencies has resulted in Silver Ships having very strong name recognition among its competitors and its customer- base.

In our analysis, we first take a look at the macro-environment and competitive environment in which the Company operates, follow by the analysis of the Company’s overall situation (SWOT) and its financial performance and examine the Company’s current strategy and strategy implementation.

II. Macro-environment

Out of all