1. Identify the key challenges faced by Power Equipments?

Power Equipments has faced many key challenges

When comes to competitive analysis, the study revealed that the

competitors dragged the customers focus towards their direction due to
quick delivery time nearly below half of the period and adjustments in
costs comparing to Power Equipments.
The main challenge addressed to the Power Equipments is to reduce the
long delivery time from nearly 36-40 weeks to below 18 weeks and to
go with cost adjustments in order to pull back the customers again and
attract the new customers also.
In order to establish quick delivery time, the Power Equipments should
prioritize the project and debit extensive managerial resources more
than the competitors resources level to complete the task within the
delivery time.

2. In what way the recommendations made by the task force would help
Power Equipments in reducing its order delivery time? What are the
major challenges in implementing the recommendations of the task
force?

The useful recommendations given by the task force to reduce the

Power Equipments order delivery time are as follows,

1. The Engineering Design(ED) group should be centralized that would

standardize the designs and drawings for the three standard modules for
each of the five consultants. The designs and drawings for the top five
consultants should be prepared and get approved by the consultants for
the three standard modules. This process will be helpful in reduce the
time and manpower effort for the design and approval stages. Moreover,
there is no need to start from the beginning for each new order. The
resultant of this standardization will reduce the engineering time by 60
percent and there will be no workload issues even if the demand
increased by 30 per cent.
2. The number of suppliers count should be reduced for each tier and
accounted to be one supplier to one tier for all the four modules. The
 concern supplier for the tier should supply all the required components
in a kit form. The idea should be extended and implemented to the entire
module. Now the company would work with 4 suppliers only. By
implementing the kit form through one supplier for one module, the
annual time taken for the component and equipment procurement
process has been reduced and the company can negotiate with annual
contracts. Furthermore, the Power Equipments should maintain a good
relationship with the supplier selected for LT chamber.
3. Maintain a good response time for the standard enquiries by the order
acquisition group without any support from any other group. The
company should prepare a standard offer a format which is in available
in intranet for common use by all regions. Followed by, systemizing the
standard costing templates help in reduce the time taken for preparing
quotations. Standard costing templates should be followed and
integrated with Bill of Material will reduce the work in documentation
works.
4. Once the order is received from the customer side and the approval is
in place, the marketing can send the necessary drawings and documents
for the LT chamber in order to reduce the overall cycle time.
5. Customize a software for LT wiring activity which includes estimating
the wire lengths according to the wiring diagrams, so that the supplier
can be informed about the exact wire length to supply the wires
accordingly. This will reduce the time taken at the wire assembly stage.
6. The process from acquisition to commercial should be standardized and
checklisted to avoid communication gap.
7. Acquisition should transfer order documents to the execution and
commercial group have to go with parallel mode sometimes rather than
going sequentially.
8. Repetition of activities at design and manufacuring should be avoided.
9. By linking the compuer-aided manufacturing package to door layout
and enable the details with Engineering Design.
The major challenges in implementing the recommendations of the
task force are as follows,
1. In order to standardize the designs and drawings for the three standard
modules, there should be proper database maintenance encompassing
the approval of the designs by various consultants for the three standard
modules.
2. To reduce the vast supplier circle to limited and maintain a good
relationship with the supplier selected for LT Chamber who is in
 position to respond to engineering changes that are made by customers
during order execution.
3. Implementing and integrating business document maintenance in an
efficient manner to reduce the time taken for documentation works.
4. Proper integration of information sharing should be formed between
marketing and LT Chamber department.
5. To develop an enterprise software for LT Wiring activity.
6. Effective standardization and checklist are needed between acquisition
and commercial to avoid communication gap.
7. Linking compuer-aided manufacturing package to door layout.