Le Petit Chef Case

Le Petit Chef Case 1) What should Gagne do? Specifically, which expulsions should she fund and why? How should she accost the exe runwayive meeting? A fair assessment of the situation at Le Petit Chef is that there are far too many throw aways on the table. This overflow has led to missed deadlines and therefore missed profit. The gap among LPC and other microwave manufacturers is closing fast and action is required. Essentially, Le Petit Chef call for a cornerstone development.There are five proposed projects A new brainy (fuzzy logic) line of microwaves, a low-cost version of an existing microwave line, an whole new low-cost line, a quick heating model, and a larger cavity Liberte. When choosing which projects to fund, Gagne must evaluate them on three basic criteria go away this project part one harvest-home from the next? Will this project spread the r&d team too thin? , and leave alone this project provide a competitive advantage? For the short term, LPC should not attempt to enter the low-cost microwave trade.Le Petit Chef is correlated with extravagantly end, high performance appliances and trying to tackle a low cost merchandise that is dominated by large companies such as Samsung and GE would not be appropriate. Because of this, both projects associated with a low end line should be crossed off Gagnes list. However, perhaps in the future when the caller-out is on much solid footing a low-end line screwing be attempted. Adding a larger cavity to the Liberte should also be cut because this just adds another(prenominal) component into the mix.Too many components that dont intersection from one crop to the next increases total cost and adaptability. Another drive to cut the larger cavity is because it really does nothing major to speciate the product. Next, LPC should fund the implementation of a Fuzzy Logic microwave line. This would differentiate the product among high-end competitors, not put too much strain on r&d according to a senior design engineer, and throw out the high-class label associated with Le Petit Chef. This project is absolutely necessary to undertake.Another project that should be funded is the development of a Liberte-express with a more powerful magnetron. This adds another vital differentiating feature, will be easy to develop, and be finished relatively quickly (6 months). At the meeting, Gagne simply exigencys to list the facts to the executives since there shouldnt be too much convincing to do. She needs to present her product choices listed above rationally and stress the need for the company to stay avowedly to its reputation by focusing on high-end appliances.She needs to alert the execs somewhat how thin r&d is spread and she should probably prepare a list of projects that could be easily axed. She needs to stress the importance of allowing r&d to focus on less projects. The primary theme of her showing should be realigning Le Petit Chef as the frontrunner in the microwave bus iness. She also needs to outline the current financial issues and how the proposed projects will affect them. 2) What factors explain Le Petit Chefs poor performance? What actions would you recommend to lighten the situation?Le Petit Chefs poor performance can be largely attributed to the new-fangled influx of competition from abroad. Essentially, the Asian manufacturers such as Samsung and Sharp infiltrated the low-end marketplace which in turn forced European microwave companies to move into the antecedently Le Petit Chef dominated high end market. One statistic that basically tells the built-in story is that the price of the microwave oven had dropped by 10% each year from 1996 to 2000. In an attempt to ward off competition, LPC spent hefty sums in advertising. This was overkill and caused financial issues.Another key factor was the r&d team being spread so thinly across so many products. submit 9 highlights this by showing the products branching out in an roughly ridicul ous manner. Quite frankly, LPC needs to reduce its projects. In order to remedy the situation, LPC needs to do a handful of things. First, they need to realize that they cannot shit out with the large foreign companies. Therefore, any thoughts of entering the low-cost market should be heavily discouraged. LPC has a niche in the high end market and they need to stick to their guns.By focusing on the high end marked, R&D is also not as overextended. Next, LPC needs to differentiate their products from the competition. They need to give the buyer some incentive to fork over more cash for their expensive microwaves. Another thing that LPC should try to do is to make more components that are interchangeable between models in order to refuse costs. LPC should also focus on the appearance of their microwaves, because to sell a high-end product it has to appear that way. Essentially, the appearance is the ultimate differentiating factor.