- INTRODUCTION: 1 paragraph (~120 words) describing Tesla’s position and overall strategy (not process technology strategy), what challenges and opportunities they face as a company, and why they need to make appropriate decisions relating to process technology in order to support the business strategy.
- PROCESS TECHNOLOGY DECISIONS AND OPTIONS: (~1p single spaced, can use bullet lists)
a. Decisions: You can briefly mention first which decisions are included and explain how they are either standard generic decisions for process technology strategy, or other decisions you felt were important to bring in, and also if any standard generic decisions were excluded (because you are treating them as policy for example) mention that.
b. Options: the process technology options table (the top table) explaining one decision at a time what the options are, as briefly as practical, but with up to 1 sentence per cell for any of the options if they need more explanation than fits in the cell. Copy and paste the table itself in this section. - ALTERNATIVE PROCESS TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES: (~1p single spaced)
a. Introduction sentence to the section to tell reader what it will be explaining. Around here, copy and past the Pink strategy table into the document (the one with the words in the cells, not the index numbers) and point out to the reader how the following paragraphs explain it in more detail.
b. Strategy 1: Describe the first strategy listed List the strategic theme and expand on the narrative if necessary – why would someone consider such a theme (motivation). If the theme is inspired by another company, you can mention it. Finally describe (briefly unless it is non-obvious) why you chose the options you did for to define this strategy.
c. Strategy 2: do the same for this strategy, etc, Each strategy merits a solid paragraph.
d. Strategy 3 etc.
Even if not in the strategy table, you could add a summary of Tesla’s current process technology strategy. - OBJECTIVES (~1p single spaced)
a. Objectives: List the objectives you decided to use and why. In particular, for the ones that are standard generic operations strategy objectives, you can just say that they are standard. If you use any that are less standard or if there are any that you chose not to use that are also common, briefly explain why. Then copy and paste the blank objectives table – with the names, and the worst and best cases as you completed them in the spreadsheet, and the importance weights included, and tell the reader that this table will be explained in the following paragraphs.
b. Most likely scenario assumed: Very briefly explain what key outside factors that might affect the evaluation of strategies against the various objectives. (the ones you plan to include later on in scenario analysis) and state and what you are assuming for their most likely case. For instance, a trend toward more or less globalization might affect the relationship between technology and cost, or the importance of flexibility etc. Or a trend toward more or less rapid diffusion of some of the emerging technologies we discussed such as AI and digital manufacturing could affect how much it costs Tesla to utilize such technologies, as well as the importance of doing so when competitors are also using them.
c. For the first objective, have a short paragraph describing the terms in which the objective is to be measured, if any, extra explanation of the worst case you listed (if such explanation is necessary) and the best case. Take as long as you need to explain these – don’t worry if it takes a little longer than some of the other explanations. Finally state the importance weight you gave this objective and provide your rationale for why you gave this objective the importance weights you did.
d. Do the same for the other objectives etc. (one paragraph for each objective)
- SCORING: This is a critical part of the report – it is not just a matter of defining your terms for the strategies and the objectives, but rather defining your reasoning for how the strategies perform.
a. Intro sentence: Start with a sentence saying that this section explains how you estimated the performance of the strategies against the objectives, and include the completed table with the scores (0.7 and so on) here.
b. Strategy scores on objective 1: You do not have to explain why you give a particular strategy a score of 0.7 against some objective instead of 0.6 – you don’t have to be quantitative at all in this explanation. But give the reasoning for why the highest scoring strategy was highest and so on, and if one was especially high or low, explain a little more.
c. Do this for the second objective, etc. (one paragraph for each objective) - INITIAL RESULTS:
a. Comparison of strategies against objectives: Show the radar chart graph and describe what you see briefly – like you might in a powerpoint presentation showing the chart, e.g. “We see that the Commodity strategy significantly outperforms the other strategies on cost, and does reasonably well compared to the other strategies on all other objectives, while the Fashion strategy seems to do very poorly on quality in spite of its excellent performance on flexibility.
b. Overall comparison of strategies: Here show the bar chart and add a sentence or two describing what you see, again briefly as you might in a Powerpoint slide, e.g. “The Commodity strategy seems to outperform the other strategies by a substantial margin, and the Fashion strategy appears to be substantially worse than the others.” - SCENARIO ANALYSIS:
a. The scenarios: Referring back to 4b above state your assumptions for the favorable scenario and why you are using these assumptions (e.g., why they are plausible but significant differences from the most likely) and then do the same for the unfavorable scenario. If you want to consider any other scenarios, state the assumptions for those scenarios as well.
b. Scores: For each scenario, show the objectives scoring table with the importance weights, and explain why you made any significant changes in any of the scores for any of the strategies or in importance weights due to the scenario.
c. Scenario analysis results: Show the bar charts for all 3 scenarios side by side (I hope you can figure out how to do this without too much trouble with your Microsoft Office skills; if not, just put them in a row – it won’t look quite as good, but its ok. Discuss briefly what you see, e.g., “The Commodity strategy which was best in the most likely scenario is also best in the favorable scenario, but is much worse in the unfavorable scenario. In contrast, the High Quality strategy performs fairly well in all three scenarios.” - DISCUSSION: ~1p
a. Recommendation: Which of the strategies analyzed do you recommend Tesla pursue?
b. Limitations: How confident are you in the recommendation? Are there any parts where if you were able to get more information or more knowledge about some influence, you think it might have changed your answer?
c. Insights: What are the main drivers of the relative attractiveness of the strategies? Is there anything else that comes out from your analysis that tells you something was especially important that wasn’t obvious to you (and more importantly, to your reader) before the analysis?
d. Possible improvements: If the strategies are lop-sided – one performs very well on some objectives and another on different objectives, especially in particular scenarios, you might think about whether there is a way to modify the strategy to eliminate most of the downside while retaining most of the upside, or whether it might be plausible to combine some aspects of one strategy and some of another to get the best features of each. (This paragraph is optional – do not do any further analysis or research for this, but if you think you have a good idea that someone might want to look at more closely – another modified strategy, you can mention the idea without recommending it. It is a nice step for the iterative creative process – when you have a good solution, look for a better one).