Running head: Case study for Boise 1

Case study for Boise

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation
Case study for Boise 2

Introduction

The assignment aims to provide the information about the current case study of Boise

automation Canada Ltd. The main purpose of this assignment is to provide detailed information

by giving summary of the case study. Moreover, the assignment has focused on providing

recommendation regarding the issue that could be handled in a different manner. It is important

to understand that the current case study has demonstrated about the lost order at Northern Paper,

and in this assignment recommendation has been provided to solve this issue in an effective

manner.

Summary of the case

It is important to understand that Rob Allison is the senior account manager in Boise

Automation Canada Ltd. Rob Allison has discovered on September 9 th 2011 that they have

suffered a huge loss of around $1.2 million as they failed to avail a luring opportunity with

Northern Paper Inc. It is noted that Northern Paper Inc. is situated at Rocky Falls Ontario almost

a 3-hour drive from Ontario, Canada (Taylor, 2012). Rob Allison got a call from Dan Reynolds

from Northern Inc seven months ago that whether they are interested in bidding for a new

automation system. However, after 7 months they got an email telling them that Boise have lost

an order. Rob Allison had the experience of more than 20 years in selling automation system to

large industries but yet failed to gain the opportunity of $1.2 million and now reviewing his

actions that where he lacks behind.

Firstly, Rob reviewed about the automation systems. It is analyzed in the study of Zhu,

Wang & Zhang, (2020) that automation system is greatly used in production facilities. It usually

includes sensors, controllers and actuators which are automatically being programmed.
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Therefore, it is mainly found that different industries require automated systems that has

hundreds or thousands of sensors and actuators so that continuous manufacturing does not halt.

On the other hand, Rob has also studied about the competitors in the market against Boise

automation Canada Ltd. In the market of automation system there are several competitors:

manufacturing solution providers, independent system integrators and hardware suppliers.

Guesalaga & Kapelianis (2015) demonstrated that manufacturing solution providers are the

manufacturers of automation system and currently there are 5 to 10 large companies including

Rockwell, Siemens and Honey well that have provided a tough competition to Boise automation

Canada Ltd. On the other hand, it is important to understand that there are different hardware

suppliers that manufacture sensors and actuators as it is purchased as a component of system

(Taylor, 2012).

It is also summarized that Rob reviewed about the paper making industry. Nowadays,

paper making is a competitive global market which includes high capital and technology.

Therefore, it is found that paper makers of Canada are currently competing against the low cost

of sellers in the world. Many operations in the paper industries are automatically controlled

(Epifanov et al., 2020). So any modification or update requires the approval of the many people

in an organization. Once the modification or changes got approved by the company the

engineering department work side by side with the purchasing department. Staff related to

purchasing department examined the financial terms while engineering department examined the

technological aspects of proposal (Taylor, 2012). On the other hand, suppliers sometimes suggest

their designs and improvements in the project and once the supplier is selected project managers

are appointed by both the companies to continue the process.

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Lastly, it is summarized by Rob that Boise automation Canada produces electrical and

electronic products while also manufactures automation equipment (Taylor, 2012). Boise is

responsible for the design of automation system, manufacturing and supply for all the equipment

necessary in the automation system and installation of the system in the customer’s organization.

Boise due to its advance features has a competitive advantage over other companies which

includes high resolution graphics on computer system, help functions on screen display, high

accuracy in optimal control or high speed in communication with the system. However,

sometimes Boise automation Canada criticized for its systems because that are very complex and

require a huge amount of technical skills and needs greater time for customers to learn.

Recommendations On How the Issue Could Have Been Managed Differently

It is important to understand that Boise automation Canada Ltd has faced several issues

(Taylor, 2012). It is found from the above summarized work of Boise automation that helped

Rob to understand the issues in an effective manner and it is easier to find better solutions to

tackle the issue differently. Firstly, it is found that Boise manufactures automation systems are

complex and time consuming and, therefore, it required a great amount of technical skills to

operate it. However, it is important to provide a better solution so that Boise automation can

mitigate the issue related to technical skills. It is recommendation that Boise automation should

not made complex machines that are difficult to operate (Jhaver et al., 2019). Moreover, it should

be simple and handy so that they could produce large mass of products and it is easier for labours

to operate it. In this way, they can produce large scale of products in minimum amount of time

that will not only give the benefit to its company but also to its customers.

The second alarming issue related to complexity of machine is educating the labours that

are working in Northern Inc. and other buyers of Boise automation. It is important for Boise
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automation Canada Ltd that they manufacturer simple rather than complex machine so that a

worker in the company can work with ease (Jaworski, Seljan, & Dunđer, 2017). Other wise a

company has to spend a large amount of money to train its worker for operating the automation

system. The complexity of a machine can be a source of danger or can cause an accident in a

company. In this way, Boise automation can loss manufacturing orders from company. On the

other hand, they should provide training to managers of other companies and educate them about

the working mechanism of the automation system.

The third issue faced by Boise automation Canada Ltd is high cost of maintenance of the

machine. It is found that the complex machines required greater maintenance cost which in turn

will raise the price of the products and due to high competitive market around the world a

company will lose its customers and will suffer a great loss (Demchak, 2018). It is also found

from the summary that due to the high expense, the price for the products will rise even if the

labor cost and material cost do not get high (Taylor, 2012). A company has to benefit from its

products to suffer a facility cost. Therefore, the recommendation for Boise automation is to

maintain the automation system maintenance cost and it should be low. It is important to

understand that the maintenance cost of automation system can be minimise by removing high

features, and extra sensors from the machine. Therefore, Boise automation has to remove it from

their machines in order to improve their quality and minimising the maintenance cost in an

effective manner.

Lastly, it is found that Boise automation failed to get better understanding about their

competitors. Therefore, it is recommended that a supplier should know it’s competitors so that

they can gain knowledge about other systems as well. A supplier should know what other

companies are offering because it can help the company to make better products, give better
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services and can help them to stand in the market full of competitors. While it can help a

company to settle at a price that is more competitive and can help in launching different

initiatives.
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References

Demchak, C. C. (2018). Military organizations, complex machines. Cornell University Press.

Epifanov, A. V., Tsoy, E. V., Smirnova, V. O., & Smirnova, A. S. (2020, April). Automated

control systems for wastewater discharges in the pulp and paper industry. In Journal of

Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1515, No. 3, p. 032054). IOP Publishing.

Guesalaga, R., & Kapelianis, D. (2015). When do salespeople pursue and win deals? a two-stage

model of sales opportunity outcomes. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.

Jaworski, R., Seljan, S., & Dunđer, I. (2017). Towards educating and motivating the crowd–a

crowdsourcing platform for harvesting the fruits of NLP students' labour. In Proc. 8th

Language & Technology Conference–Human Language Technologies as a Challenge for

Computer Science and Linguistics (pp. 332-336).

Jhaver, S., Birman, I., Gilbert, E., & Bruckman, A. (2019). Human-machine collaboration for

content regulation: The case of Reddit Automoderator. ACM Transactions on Computer-

Human Interaction (TOCHI), 26(5), 1-35.

Taylor, M. (2012). Boise Automation Canada LTD.: The Lost Order at Northern Paper.

University of Western Ontario.

Zhu, W., Wang, Z., & Zhang, Z. (2020). Renovation of automation system based on Industrial

Internet of Things: A case study of a sewage treatment plant. Sensors, 20(8), 2175.