Busi­ness lo­ca­ti­on works­heet

Works­heet Lo­ca­ti­on De­ci­si­on

"Ame­ri­can Ap­pa­rel" is a ver­ti­cal­ly in­te­gra­ted ma­nu­fac­tu­rer and re­tailer of clo­thing for men, women, kids and dogs based in Los An­ge­les, USA. So far they have ma­nu­fac­tu­red their pro­ducts in the USA but sold them late­ly also in coun­tries like Great Bri­tain, Fran­ce, Ger­ma­ny, Is­ra­el or Korea (see "Store Lo­ca­ti­ons" on their web­site www.​ame​rica​napp​arel.​net). As sales fi­gu­res in these coun­tries are con­stant­ly ri­sing they have de­ci­ded to set up a new sub­si­dia­ry in Eu­ro­pe, which will make them re­spond more quick­ly to mar­ket de­man­ds there. The new site will in­clu­de ma­nu­fac­tu­ring fa­ci­li­ties and func­tion as a dis­tri­bu­ti­on cent­re for Eu­ro­pe. Pro­jec­ted staff: 400.

Your tasks:

1. Go to the com­pa­ny web­site to get more in­for­ma­ti­on on "Ame­ri­can Ap­pa­rel" (pro­ducts, qua­li­ty, workers etc.) → Go the "Mis­si­on" sec­tion on their web­site.
   • What is their phi­lo­so­phy?
   • What's their at­ti­tu­de towards their staff?
   • How can they sur­vi­ve wi­thout ha­ving their pro­ducts ma­nu­fac­tu­red in cheap la­bour coun­tries?
2. The com­pa­ny has al­re­a­dy un­der­ta­ken preli­mi­na­ry re­se­arch on this mat­ter, and has drawn a list of three pos­si­ble lo­ca­ti­ons. Only one of these will be cho­sen.
   • East Ger­ma­ny (www.​iic.​de/), Frank­furt/Oder area
   • The Czech Re­pu­blic, Pil­sen area (Cech: 'Plzen')
   • Bul­ga­ria (www.​inv​estb​ulga​ria.​com), Ple­ven area
   1. Form groups of 3 or 4 stu­dents. De­ci­de which lo­ca­ti­on fac­tors are im­portant for "Ame­ri­can Ap­pa­rel" and its busi­ness ob­jec­tives (while loo­king at the web­sites you may find ad­di­tio­nal/dif­fe­rent fac­tors im­portant).
   2. Set up an eva­lua­ti­on table with Excel (Ent­schei­dungs­be­wer­tungs­ta­bel­le - see below), fill in the fac­tors you have de­ci­ded upon, de­ci­de about and fill in the weight­ing (Ge­wich­tung) for each fac­tor, eva­lua­te each lo­ca­ti­on ac­cor­ding to the lo­ca­ti­on fac­tors cho­sen, and cal­cu­la­te the re­sult.
3. Your group must give a pre­sen­ta­ti­on on your re­sults ex­plai­ning about the choice of lo­ca­ti­on fac­tors and the lo­ca­ti­ons' ran­kings for each of them. In case you find a bet­ter lo­ca­ti­on in one of the coun­tries feel free to pro­mo­te it!

Do­ku­ment her­un­ter­la­den [.doc][32 KB]