Company Overview
The Company is a supplier of large, deep drawn, stamped metal products for the consumer electronics and automtoive industry.
The Company specializes in the design and manufacture of magnetic shields.
Engagement Overview
The Company had just been informed that orders from its largest customer, approximately two-thirds of its volume, would be lost within 12 to 18 months. Fort Dearborn was hired to develop and implement a strategic plan in response to the loss of this customer and, most likely, the loss of its remaining customer base as production moved to lower cost environments.
FDP helped management define its core competencies and how the Company’s resources could generate value in other industries.
Fort Dearborn performed a market assessment of thin-metal stamping, heat treating and contract assembly to determine the top industries that would become their new target markets.
FDP analyzed channels of distribution to determine how other company products might fit into current channels.
FDP evaluated various asset redeployment scenarios with respect to prospects and barriers of entry into potential new industries, including:
–Establishing operations in a lower-cost environment;
–Consolidation of two plants characterized by two distinctly different operations and cultures;
–Sale/merger with complementary business as a going concern; and/or
–Combination of the above.
Fort Dearborn worked with an outside firm to evaluate high-potential new industries/sectors, from which an exhaustive potential customer list was generated, and a cold-call program was initiated, which led to hundreds of different contacts and eventually resulted in developing good prospects in the OEM auto segment.
Results
Based on a tangible action plan, management was given additional time and resources by ownership to execute the plan.