Page 249 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

240 Appendix A

“High service levels are important to increase market share, and ABC’s current
service levels could be jeopardized if all manufacturing were in one location.”
Her reasoning appears sound. First, as she says, ABC’s major markets are shift-
ing away from the Midwest, resulting in increased delivery times; second, if there
should be a fire or another catastrophe, its reputation for good service would cer-
tainly deteriorate.
“I feel so strongly about maintaining or improving current service levels that I
think service levels should be a major criterion for evaluating the various alterna-
tives for expanding capacity.”
Metzger’s office is centrally located in the manufacturing area of the facility. As
Gilmore enters, Metzger immediately apologizes: He has to delay their meeting for
at least an hour to meet with his maintenance, press, and assembly department fore-
men. One of the major fabrication lines has broken down, and they have to find a way
to complete a production run because the customer’s trailers are waiting at the ship-
ping dock. In the meantime, he asks his assistant to give Gilmore a tour of the plant.
Gilmore is immediately impressed with the excellent housekeeping in the
plant. Aisles are clear and well marked, storage areas are orderly with good use
of clear height, individual work areas are clean and well organized, and there
are many examples of point-of-use storage where materials are stored close to
and are easily available to the production operators. The assistant explains that
each operator is responsible for his own workplace—that housekeeping person-
nel are used only to maintain major travel aisles. Gilmore is also impressed with
the production equipment, which appears reasonably state of the art. The assis-
tant remarks that the industrial engineering group has an aggressive program
to continually evaluate and upgrade equipment and that the plant engineering
department is adept at designing and installing special-purpose equipment.
When Metzger returns, he again apologizes profusely and explains that they
were able to make some equipment substitutions that will minimize the down-
time on the assembly line as well as increase the rate of delivery of the finished
product to the customer’s trailers. Gilmore compliments Metzger on the general
appearance of the manufacturing facility and comments that it could be a model
for many of his clients’ facilities. He asks Metzger to expand a bit on his back-
ground as portrayed the previous week at the initial meeting.
Metzger augmented his high school education with numerous in-house courses
offered by ABC. He broadened himself beyond those offerings by taking courses
in human relations, shop supervision, quality control, and advanced shop math
at the local community college. Those efforts served him well because he was
promoted to maintenance group leader and then succeeded the press depart-
ment foreman when that individual became ill. As he explained last week, he
was fortunate to be selected to replace Gupta as plant manager when Gupta was
promoted.