A case study on "Four Star Industries Singapore: Matching Supply" (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: A, University of Cambridge, course: Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, language: English, abstract: The study is being conducted on the issues and problems that were faced by the Five Star Industries Private Limited, a famous mattress brand which had been suffering from heavy losses owing to the company's sales falling and competition penetrating the market, with continuously increasing day by day. The company came into being in 1966 when a carpenter and his wife took the initiative and formed this company to produce spring mattresses. In order to produce the mattresses, Gim Sin the carpenter purchased sophisticated machinery owing to the machines high productivity and quality.
However, with time, the intensity of the competition I the mattress producing industry increased and the company had to suffer from the problems of local mattress producers dominating the mattress market and thus forced the company t take corrective action. The company was highly affected since it was heavily dependent on the local dealers who now penetrated the market with their own production of mattresses. However, the company attempted to do this by increasing its product range and service level. Although the action was to improve the company's condition, yet it further deteriorated the company's position since the variety of product ranges which now resided in their portfolio became difficult for them to manage since the increased variety slowed the mattress production. The act of thus matching the demand with the supply of these variety of mattresses became a problem for the company and thus led to the company facing order fulfillment problems since the wide variety of products produced and the orders of these various mattresses put a heavy pressure on the company's manufacturing operations and created difficulties in production scheduling in turn. This pressure o the manufacturing sector of the business and the problems faced by the company instigated a fear in Gim Sin of employees leaving the organization since their job has been toughening day by day due to the introduction of this wide variety of products.