Water tech has been able to achieve economies of scale with its pool cleaners through its strategic process such as its lean systems and process strategy. Although Water Tech has had much success in business and has come to be a provider of pool cleaners for companies such as Wal-Mart, it still has room for improvement like many other companies. Some key areas where we found that water tech could improve on are communication more specifically on the issues of information silo amongst its departments and the products that it receives from its customers. Water Tech currently faces a problem of lack of communication amongst it departments. Mainly its Accounting, Customer Service, Engineering and logistics department. When departments don’t have access to the same amount of information it causes the time for a customer or client’s request to be longer than need be. The customers or clients will often have to be transferred to different people and many departments which creates a gap in communication because information gets lost the longer it is to communicate a message or order through. This will result in the customer or client's request not being fulfilled the way they intended it to be because of its different interpretation amongst different departments. This can be resolved by having the companies I.T tech support provide access for its employees who deal with customers directly as well at those that do not. With this done the companies direct employees such as customer service can resolve a customer's issue or request without having to reach out to multiple people and its internal employees who do not have direct contact with customers can have the necessary information to fulfill a customer's order that is being shipped. Leaving critical task such as ones to be handled by the accounts payable department to reduce the possibility of an error in the payment of a customer's order while the remaining departments can focus on getting the item from the manufacturer to the supplier to the end user.
Another recommendation for Water Tech in regards to its processes is its supply chain mainly the company that creates its products. Currently Water Tech primary source for its products is a company in China that it has outsourced production to, a company that has been creating the products with cheap parts that don’t last as need be. Although the company is able to create the products at a low cost which allows water tech to accrue huge profits per unit. Some of the products do not align with the quality that Water Tech aims to delivery. This in the long run hurts the company’s image, which will cause a ripple effect through its customer, retailers, and sponsors. If these products with faulty parts are continually sold to customers it will cost the company a fortune through its external failure cost. One solution to this problem is for the company to reassess its expectations and brand quality to its manufacture. Meaning that Water Tech will have to demonstrate the proper statistical testing and level of acceptance in its statistical testing to tighten the gap of acceptable products. The smaller the error is the more secure the product will be. Keeping in mind that the products are made to wear out at a certain time so that customers can purchase another. Another solution is for Water Tech to have a diversified source of resource so that it does not depend heavily on one supplier. By depending on one major supplier for its products the company puts itself at risk of any minor technicalities or major faults the may come up. If Water Tech diversifies its products instead of heavily relying on one its suppliers will compete to keep their acceptable statistical number. Having the two suppliers compete for business will also assure that Water Tech receive the quality of service it desires to reach economies of scale.
The solutions presented help Water Tech to achieve a economies of design, scale, and quality. These recommendations help Water Tech to save in cost, reduce the possibilities of errors in its process strategy to preserve and boost its brand image, to provide better products to its customers. The improvements will also assist in the internal process such as fulfilling customer request and departments completing their individual task though their daily function.
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