Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company - Research Paper Example

The challenge pushed the company, towards changing its market outlook, to adopt an approach where they targeted profitable customer segments (Mentzer, et al., 2001). The strategy has pushed the company to focus on the marketing and the sales of original equipment. Additionally, the company has had to adopt market-back innovation, which featured the rejuvenation of product lines like Wrangler and Eagle. There was also the challenge of improving its operational excellence across its supply chain – including the company’s 52 operational facilities located at 22 countries (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 2012).

The goal of the company has been the reduction of inventory at the different facilities as well as affiliated facilities, while at the same time improving the efficiency of business (Lavassani, Movahedi & Kumar, 2009). The supply chain needs to evolve in a number of areas, so that it can support its business. These include focusing their sales and production capacity to the service of the highly profitable customer segments, including the original equipment line. Secondly, the company needs to carry out market-back innovation continually, which will increase its efficiency through re-energizing its brands.

Thirdly, the company will need to push its facilities and those of its suppliers to increase their operational excellence, through changes like the reduction of inventory (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 2012). A larger proportion of the company’s success has come from its vertically integrated sales outlook and supply chain. For example, the company realized huge success through its vertical integration with Formula one and NASCAR. Their major success through the company’s vertical integration with these vehicle consumers and vehicle makers shows that the company should widen its vertical integration (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 2012).

The wider vertically integrated supply chain should cover other players like garage owners, car importers, car manufacturers, the suppliers of rubber materials and other commodity producers. 2. The competitive advantage of the company lies in the area of quality, primarily due to their reputation as the main suppliers of reputable racing companies like Formula one and NASCAR. The company’s reputation for quality products can also be traced to the Goodyear blimp, after the first Goodyear blimp flew in 1925 (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 2012).

The core operational competencies of the company include that its tires have been associated with sporting cars and events, to the levels that they have gained reputation for their performance capabilities. The second operational competency is the company’s business in 22 countries, where its brands are reputable (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 2012). Thirdly, many of the company’s brands are globally reputable, which allows it to win against its competitors. The market risks facing the company include that its market positioning has been tainted by its ranking, as the 19th-largest corporate contributor to air pollution in the US.

This threat becomes worse, following the continued pressure of different corporate consumers to consume the products of green-operating companies (Simchi-Levi, Kaminsky & Simchi-levi, 2007). The second competitive threat facing the compan