ACC and DJC’s Operations Strategies and Cost Differences

Case Report on American Connector Company
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Case report on American Connector Company (ACC)
Despite the two companies producing similar products, they differed in operations strategies since each had a point of concern regarding the production and marketing of their products. The ACC's operations strategy was based on customer engagement because the quality of products was the ultimate goal for the company in all production areas. To maintain top-notch quality, the company developed a customer engagement system where the employees directly engaged with the customers to design and create products according to consumer preferences. By so doing, it would be adequate to meet the required standards since all customers would have the privilege to monitor products in all stages of development; that way, the final products would be of top quality.
On the other hand, DJC's different operations strategy enabled it to remain a giant in the industry. The company adopted the product strategy, where it engaged in product diversification. The company was primarily involved in producing four types of electrical connectors while upholding the required quality and performance. According to Zhang (2022), the basic types of connectors produced by DJC were board-to-board, item-to-board, wire-to-wire, and wire-to-outlet. The ability of the company to produce these types of electrical connectors in the desired qualities was the reason for its growth and the ability to gain market advantage.
Based on the different approaches to operations strategies, the two companies excelled differently and gained a considerable cost difference. There were experienced differences in costs and quality between the two companies. For instance, there was deteriorating quality and an increased production cost in DJC's Kawasaki plant compared to its potential in the United States. One of the primary reasons for the differences was the approach to reducing costs. The ACC's Sunnyvale plant opted for operations based on low speed, lower than half of the maximum speed. The reason for this measure was to avoid downtime contrary to the scheduled ones, thus prolonging the lifetime of the machines. As a result, the company would not incur unplanned costs in machine repairs and replacements. Cost differential in the companies is based on asset utilization, raw material yields, process technology, and inventory management. Molding co...