Integrated Planning

Assume the role of a business consultant to a family business. The family has used an inheritance to acquire a medium sized pharmaceutical company. In 2016 sales were down ten percent from the previous year. Indeed, business has declined in the past years (2015 and 2016), even though the pharmaceutical industry has been growing. The family that acquired the business seeks your help. Assume that 2017 sales were the same as sales for 2016–meaning there was not additional decline from 2016. The goal of the organization is to grow its business from its current level in 2017 by ten percent in 2018. After 2018 it would expect to grow by an additional five percent per year for the next three years after that.

Here is a list of twelve departments in the organization.

Departments

• Distribution
• Manufacturing
• Operations
• Product Promotion
• Quality assurance
• New-product development
• Market research
• Accounting
• Finance
• Human Resources
• Sales
• Legal and governmental affairs

Questions

• Based on what you know about the operations of these different departments, analyze and express how all aspects of this organization interrelate to support the goals of the organization as a whole.
• Rank order the twelve (12) departments in order of importance for assigning resources (including capital and human resources) to improve business in the future
• Explain your logic for rank ordering the first 4 departments. (i.e. If you chose Finance as the first place to allocate your resources, indicate why you chose that and what benefit you see this bringing to the company. Note: Finance should not be in your top four picks! )
• What did you learn about organization structure and design from this exercise?

This paper is worth 25 points. The points will be allocated as follows:

• 5 points
• 3 points
• 12 points–3 points for each of the 4 choices
• 5 points