Barilla SpA - Harvard Business Case Analysis

In spite of the potential to develop first mover advantages, the plan suffers from five significant drawbacks. First, the plan is incomplete in how it addresses the price promotion environment. Specific ideas need to be communicated that reinforce the need to continue promotions but change how they are derived and managed. Sales Rep buy-in should be the easiest to address since it is internal to Barilla but the Sales Reps are campaigning against it outside the company. Improving service and reducing inventory should have no bearing on how Sales Reps are compensated so Barilla should direct the Reps to develop and sell JITD instead of spending too much time trying to convince them. Second, the plan is incomplete in how it addresses expectations on the manufacturing operations which are constrained by high changeover costs. Manufacturing will have to eventually focus on finding ways to continuously improve changeover times but no quick fix will be available if increased responsiveness is required immediately. Barilla will have to consider a pilot or phase approach to create enough opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of each change. Third, the plan needs a starting point but lacks one. The ideas are intuitive but have to be proven in a representative setting that is non-threatening to everyone. …