The Meditech Case

1. What are Meditech's problems in introducing new products? In manufacturing ALL products?
There is Lack of communications between marketing department and supply chain. Basically, new
products are being introduce, which makes an impact in the production line. This process backup
the release of existing orders. Old and current customer’s orders get delayed. . It took 4 months to
catch up, but bad service along with dropped orders had a decrease in orders, with an increase in
planned production. Also their supply chain for new innovative products is not customer service
oriented. They were driving a JIT, and then were flooded with orders in which they could not keep
up due to high lead times and low FG(panic ordering). According to case it show low finished good
inventory therefore, the company took orders and assembled finished goods, which take an ample
of time to complete the actual finished good.
2. What is driving these problems, both systemically and organizationally?
Lack of communication between each department, Bullwhip effect, customer orders time, poor
forecasting and unclear production schedules.
3. Why is the customer service manager the first person to recognize the major issues?
From the case there are Customer’s complaints due to the product arriving late to them. Customer
first start to complain when they don't receive their products on time. Due to the nature of the
industry, time is extremely important.
4. How would you fix these problems?
1.) Share demand information between all levels of distribution and production.
2.) Increase the advanced ordering time period of new products while at the same time creating
incentives to pre-order.
3). Change Meditech techniques into a linear regression forecast that relies on past data. Linear
regression forecasting will allow Meditech to better predict the demands of their new products and
eliminate some of the demand fluctuations that they are currently going through
4). Alternatively, put assembly within pull system and eliminate bulk inventory.