Horizon Foods Corporation Horizon Foods

Horizon Foods Corporation

Horizon Foods is a national provider of food products, basically specialized on offering ethnic food specialties. They produce their items on one location, plants, and then transport them to public warehouses, from where they once again transport them to destinations requested by the customers, based on previous orders. Their customers are retail stores which generally make small purchases and all transportation costs are being paid by the food processing company.

Horizon Foods is presented with a wide and demanding audience, which not only requires the basic products, they also desire customized and personalized items, which take longer to produce and pose as such difficulties for the manufacturer. Their customers are attracted through various promotional strategies and the producer invests limited resources in advertising their food. The Horizon Foods Corporation relies on the fact that their demand is sustainable through the high quality of their products and services.

Besides the customers' requests, the market in which Horizon Food activates is characterized by fierce competition from other food processors. A large number of companies offering similar products have risen during the recent years, and Horizon Foods stands the possibility of loosing their customers to the competition. The main reason why the clients complain is given by a poor quality of the logistics system at Horizon. Due to this, the customers, generally retail stores, often find themselves in the situation when they run out of Horizon products and the next transport has yet to arrive.

As a consequence, it becomes obvious that there is a problem at Horizon Foods, and this problem materializes in unsatisfied customers which could renounce the services delivered by the food processor. This problem is without a doubt characteristic to the logistics system at Horizon and it arose from a discrepancy in approaching business. In other words, the Production and Marketing departments within Horizon fail to collaborate and work together as a team, for the benefit of the organization.

The most obvious problem is that Horizon is incapable to successfully meet its deadlines and deliver their products on time to customers. Also, since they have limited control over their operations, they are incapable of keeping their customers informed as to the amount of time by which their orders will be delayed. This is without a doubt a serious problem which could even mean the end of Horizon if they don't take measures as soon as possible. The main explanation of the gravity of this problem derives from customers' discontent and their continuous threats to switch to other companies, competitors of Horizon. Were this to happen, the food processor would be faced with even more serious problems, not excluding bankruptcy.

A major factor which generated this situation is the poor cooperation between the Production and Marketing departments within Horizon Foods. The Production department is accustomed to being in charge and handling the logistics as well. The Marketing team is rather new within Horizon and encounters difficulties with adjusting, finding their purpose and implementing a good course of action. They also find it difficult to get the other departments to accept and recognize them as a vital unit within Horizon. The Marketing department is in charge of customer relations and the Production department is in charge of actually processing the food, transporting it and keeping the inventory. But as stated before, they fail to cooperate and throw as such the company into serious problems. In all, the major problem is given by the company's incapability to honor their orders in time and the cause for it is the poor collaboration between the two major departments within Horizon.

The gravity of the situation created is not debatable and fact remains that the problem must be solved in no time; otherwise Horizon Foods might be faced with the loss of its customers and might even witness its business decline. The first step would be to clearly analyze the operations handled by each department: break their operations into small steps and identify how they are doing in terms of quality and timely delivery.

The communication system must be improved as to permit a continuous communication between the plants and the public warehouses as to allow company managers to know at all times how many products are still in stock, how many are in the production line and how much more are needed.