GB580 Unit 10 Strategic Plan Example

Lighter Bodies, Whatever the Chassis: A Unit 10 Strategic Plan for Tollefson Body Works

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB580: Strategic Management

Unit 10 Strategic Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Tollefson Body Works, its partners and every figure are composite and illustrative; the frameworks, policies and sources cited are real.

Executive Summary

Tollefson Body Works will become the leading builder of lightweight insulated bodies for grocery and foodservice delivery trucks in the Upper Midwest and Canada. Three moves carry this commitment. First, Tollefson will reduce the weight of its standard 16-foot refrigerated body from about 3,500 pounds to about 2,900 within twenty-four months, without losing thermal performance. Second, it will laminate its own lightweight composite panels on a line next to its De Pere plant, at a cost of about $4.6 million. Third, it will license a proven lightweight design from a Dutch builder and, a year later, begin selling to grocery fleets in Ontario and Quebec through a Canadian dealer. Funding of about $6.7 million across the two years comes from ending dealer stock bodies and two deferred projects, an equipment loan and operating cash. The board is asked to approve the license, the panel line and the sources of funds.

Mission and Vision

The current mission, written in 1998, reads: "To build dependable truck bodies for the fleets of the Midwest." It names a region and a quality but no customer and no advantage. The revised mission reads: "To build the lightest insulated bodies that keep grocery and foodservice deliveries at the right temperature, so our customers carry more on every route." The vision is for Tollefson to be the first body builder a grocery fleet calls when weight decides the order. David and David (2017) note that a mission should identify customers and a distinctive competence, and the revision adds both.

The Situation, Revised

External environment. The Unit 2 scan identified nineteen factors. Revised with instructor feedback, it now gives more weight to the 26,001-pound commercial license line, because fleets confirmed in interviews that keeping trucks below it is their main reason to care about body weight. Federal truck emissions standards remain in dispute and are treated as uncertain. California's refrigeration unit rule is in force. High interest rates continue to stretch fleet replacement cycles. The weighted external rating, 2.6 of 4, is unchanged.

Industry. In Unit 3, the two strongest forces were the refrigeration duopoly with chassis allocation and price rivalry; fleet buyers came next and were gaining strength, while new entrants and substitutes ranked lowest. The revision adds one point raised in feedback: refrigerated cargo vans compete more directly for urban grocery routes than the original paper allowed, so the threat of substitutes is now rated moderate to high. The opening the analysis identified still stands. Electric chassis makers need body builders who can offset battery weight, which could turn chassis makers from suppliers into partners.

Capabilities. The Unit 4 grid placed thermal performance and multi-temperature design among key strengths and weight reduction, electric refrigeration integration and chassis maker relationships among key weaknesses. Custom engineering speed, the firm's best-known strength, matters less to the strategy than it feels. The revision adds a measure the original lacked: Tollefson's labor hours per body, about 118 against about 92 at the national builder, which confirms that cost leadership is out of reach.

The Strategy

Business level. Tollefson will pursue focused differentiation on lightweight multi-temperature bodies for Class 4 to 6 trucks, as argued in Unit 5. Cost leadership is ruled out by scale, and broad differentiation spreads engineering effort across products where weight does not matter. The strategy competes on a measurable attribute: pounds on a scale.

Corporate level. Tollefson will integrate backward into panel lamination, which passed all three of Porter's tests in Unit 6. It will hold back the cold-room panel venture for twelve months of line experience and will decline the Tennessee acquisition at the asking price.

International. Tollefson will license a lightweight body design from a Dutch builder whose products were shaped by zero-emission delivery zones in European cities, under terms that give it North American exclusivity, a per-body royalty, an engineering exchange and a grant-back limited to Europe. Canadian exports through a dealer will follow. A Mexico plant is set aside because it would pursue cost, not weight.

The plan does not ask the board to bet on how fast electric trucks arrive; it asks the board to bet that weight will matter either way.

A Strategy That Survives Slow Adoption

The plan's most important property is that it does not depend on electric trucks spreading quickly. A body 600 pounds lighter carries 600 more pounds of groceries on a diesel truck kept under the commercial license line. On an electric truck, it recovers part of the payload that batteries take. If adoption is slow, Tollefson sells lightweight bodies on diesel chassis. If adoption is fast, it sells them on electric chassis and has already built the integration skills its scorecard tracks. Mintzberg and Waters (1985) describe strategies that combine a deliberate direction with room for emergent learning, and this plan fixes the direction, weight, while leaving the pace of electric-specific work to the evidence.

Implementation

The Unit 8 plan runs in three phases over twenty-four months, each with owners. In months 1 to 8, the chief executive signs the license, two engineers work at the Dutch plant and the lightweight engineering cell builds twenty pilot bodies for two grocery fleets; a phase gate requires a pilot weight of no more than 3,000 pounds and a passed thermal test before the panel line order is placed. In months 9 to 16, the panel operations manager leases the building, installs the line and qualifies its panels. In months 17 to 24, the cell converts the standard range, starting with the 16-foot body, and the sales director signs the first Canadian dealer agreement. Three policy changes support the plan: every refrigerated quote shows the body's weight, commissions reward lightweight sales and the engineering cell must sign off any design change that makes a standard body heavier by over 25 pounds.

Control

The Unit 9 system watches four premises: that regional grocery fleets begin buying electric trucks, that the panel line reaches its cost target of $6,450 per set, that the Dutch licensor remains financially stable and that the two unit makers can deliver electric refrigeration units without long waits. Each has a monthly or semiannual signal and a trigger that goes to the owners' board. A twelve-measure balanced scorecard, read from learning to financial results, tracks implementation, including a measure for the weakest capability, electric refrigeration bodies built. Kaplan and Norton (1996) describe the scorecard as a way to test and revise strategy rather than a reporting form, and the board's quarterly strategy review is designed for that.

What Would Change This Plan

Three results within two years would change the plan. If the pilot bodies reach 3,000 pounds only with materials too costly for the ,200 premium, Tollefson should delay the panel line and pursue a smaller weight reduction from its existing laminator. If the panel line's cost per set stays above $6,900 for three months after month 18, the firm should consider buying some panels from Indiana again. If fewer than 5 percent of refrigerated quotes specify electric chassis by month 24, the firm should keep the lightweight strategy but slow spending on electric-specific features. None of these results would reverse the commitment to weight, which rests on the commercial license line and fleets' payloads today. Each would change the pace and the means.

References

David, F. R., & David, F. R. (2017). Strategic management: A competitive advantage approach, concepts and cases (16th ed.). Pearson.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996). Using the balanced scorecard as a strategic management system. Harvard Business Review, 74(1), 75-85.

Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. A. (1985). Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strategic Management Journal, 6(3), 257-272. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250060306