Shanghai Good Partners Foodstuffs Co., Ltd.
. Introduction
Shanghai Good Partners Foodstuffs Co., Ltd was established in 1992, with a total investment of 1.6 million US dollars. It is solely owned by a Taiwanese businessman, Mr. Yew, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of the company.
The company was established at a crucial time in China's recent history. While China and Taiwan were still at loggerheads with each other over political issues, bilateral trades have thrived. China, especially its Eastern and Southern coastal regions, have enjoyed tremendous economic growth ever since the country's economic reform in the early 1980s. Direct Foreign Investment into China has steadily increased over the years. It was obvious that the main initial incentive that has attracted many foreign investors was the cheap labour cost offered by China. However, with a population over the size of 1.6 billion and ever increasing in its purchasing power, China has been acknowledged as a potentially huge market that many foreign companies want to have a share of.
Direct Foreign Investment in China in the food sector is represented by Multinational Companies such as Coca Cola and Nestle. Most of the small and medium-sized food companies that have entered China have come from Taiwan. Taiwanese companies enjoy the same tax incentives offered by Chinese government to foreign investors. Moreover, because Taiwan and China share the same cultural background and language, many Taiwanese businessmen find it easier to do business in mainland China than elsewhere.
Good Partner Foodstuffs Co., Ltd is headquartered in Shanghai, the commercial hub of China. In the year 2000, two other factories in Nantong and Xian were built and started operating, as a result of the company's objective to reach some of the less developed markets in inland China. The manufacturing plant in Shanghai is located in Ming Hang Industrial Park, one of the first of such industrial parks that have established in China. The site of the plant is a previous warehouse of Shanghai Pepsi Co., Ltd, occupying about 13,000 m2 of land. When the company rented the site in 1992, it has undertaken a substantive project to modify the layout of the plant to suit its own needs.
The main products manufactured by Good Partner Foodstuffs Co., Ltd are Soft flour cake and Pollock fish slice. As both are traditional Taiwanese snacks, the direct translation of their names into English may not best capture their nature.
These products are available in many of the Asian supermarkets throughout New
Zealand, although not manufactured by Good Partners.
In the Shanghai Good Partners Foodstuffs Co., Ltd, about 20 full-time managerial
staffs are employed. The number of part-time workers, usually general labourers,
ranges from 300 to over 500 depending on the size of orders received within a certain
period of time. As can be seen, the production process is very labour intensive.
2. The organization of the company
Figure 1 shows the organization chart of the company.
Mr. Yew
Mr. Deng
Mr. Yew Mr. Xu
Fig.1 Organizational chart of Shanghai Good Partners Co., Ltd.
As the Chief Executive Officer Mr. Yew has to coordinate company activities both in Shanghai and the other two cities, he is on business trip for most time of the year. Mr. Yew has thus delegated full managerial authority to Mr. Deng, the General Manager.
The General Manager, Mr. Deng has worked in the food industry for very long, and has extensive connections with suppliers and distributors in Shanghai and neighboring provinces. Prior to joining Good Partners in 1993, he was the General Manager of a Sino-US joint-ventured confectionary company and was very well known in his circle. Mr. Yew has never been involved in food-related business before he came to mainland China and was faced with lots of problems when the company first started up. He was impressed by Mr. Deng's rich experience and has invited him to take charge of the company in 1993 with very good remuneration packages. The Advisor to General Manager and the other managers in charge of production, purchasing and facility management are all long-time friends or old colleagues of Mr. Deng and have all joined the company at Mr. Deng's referrals.
As can be seen from Figure 1, the organizational structure of Good Partner is relatively flat. The authority is centralized into the hands of Mr. Deng who exerts full control and makes all important decisions in the company, with the exception of obtaining capital and investment which are controlled by the CEO. The whole management team of Shanghai Good Partners works in a compact building comprising of 5 large offices and one conference room sited only 200 meters away from the actual manufacturing plant. As a result of this and Mr. Deng's close relationship with some of his subordinates, the level of formalization and degree of bureaucracy within the company is low. After all, Good Partner is a small company. A manager's telephone discussion with a supplier or customer can be heard throughout the office and information gets around quickly. Mr. Deng, like all Chinese managers, prefers personal interaction to the use of memos or any other kinds of paperwork.
It seems that the company does not have a very clear mission statement. And there are no clearly written job descriptions for each staff. Rather, the company is operating in a way as to respond to various kinds of changes as the situation arises. Thus, non-routine problems often arise and the manager concerned is often unsure whether it is his responsibility to get the problem solved. So, important issues are always referred to Mr. Deng in a timely manner and Mr. Deng makes decisions quickly.
Mr. Deng's personal friendship with his subordinates has not deterred him from exerting full control within the company. Should a staff had made an individual decision that he himself disagreed with, Mr. Deng is always quick to let his anger known. As a result, during my stay in the company, I have not observed or heard anything such as interdepartmental bargaining, that is usually very common in a large organization. Mr. Deng decision is final, and all departments have to accept and implement that decision. This might has led to feeling of demotivation and dissatisfaction among some of the staffs as they are left out of the crucial decision-making process in which they should have a say.
The rest of the management teams include the managers in charge of Quality Assurance, Human Resource and Accounting. The nephew of the CEO, also known as Mr. Yew, takes the position of Plant Manager. His role is to update the CEO on important issues and give advice to Mr. Deng while the CEO is away.
The department of Sales and Marketing has its own separate office in downtown Shanghai and is under the direct control of the CEO. It deals primarily with current and potential sales representatives and distributors from all of China.
2. Human Resource
Full time employees only make up less than 10% of the total working staffs in Shanghai Good Partners. They include the various managers, accountants, food technologists and a few lorry drivers who are responsible for delivering goods to customers within Shanghai. The rest is accounted for by the several hundred hourly-waged general laborers.
Although the demand for Soft flour cake and Pollock fish slice is not seasonal in a strict sense, the number and size of orders that come in do vary quite a bit depending on the time of the year. In Shanghai Good Partners, the degree of production automation is not very high and the packaging stage of the production is almost entirely done manually. Thus there is a constant need for an abundant supply of workers, especially when the schedule gets busy.
China is well known for its millions of flowing migrant workers. Large cities such ...
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Although the demand for Soft flour cake and Pollock fish slice is not seasonal in a strict sense, the number and size of orders that come in do vary quite a bit depending on the time of the year. In Shanghai Good Partners, the degree of production automation is not very high and the packaging stage of the production is almost entirely done manually. Thus there is a constant need for an abundant supply of workers, especially when the schedule gets busy.
China is well known for its millions of flowing migrant workers. Large cities such as Shanghai are often favored destinations for these workers because jobs here are abundant and better paid. Shanghai Good Partners employs around 300 female workers for the packaging of the food products at any time of the year. Figure 2 shows the picture taken in the packaging room of the plant.
Fig.2 Packaging stage of the food products.
As the Ming Hang Industrial Park is quite concentrated with job-seeking workers, recruitment often occurs by walk-ins of the workers or by friends' referrals. There is usually a short training course for the newly recruited workers. As workers involved in packaging are not exposed to any major hazards, training for them often centers on issues of personal hygiene. However, as packaging by hand for extended period is very physically demanding, many of the female recruits have found the work very hard. And I was told that after a few days of starting the job, many recruits' hands become red and swollen, as a result of constant handling of the packaging material. The company has not considered any way to help workers to get through this stage and those workers who cannot endure it are advised to leave. Although in my view this is also a form of work related hazard, it seems that nothing has been done at this stage.
For other male workers that have to work near machines and hot surfaces that has temperature in excess of 100?C, general safety induction programs are often conducted to caution them against these hazards. However, in the plant I have seen many workers without gloves or any other protection equipments. Also, the floor is often wet and slippery and it seems that these hazards have not caught anyone's attention. There have been many horrible accidents in food manufacturing plants reported in the Chinese media in which workers were badly injured or killed by hot solutions and equipments. I have expressed my concerns to some of the friendly first-line production supervisors but they told me that foolproof prevention could only be achieved if the top management was committed to it.
Good Partners has developed its own set of reward systems to motivate its staffs. Many of the managerial staffs have worked in Good Partners since its establishment and they are regarded as an asset to the company. Remunerations for these staffs are very generous, including extra bonuses at the end of the year when the business is performing well.
For the part time hourly-waged workers, wages could be as low as 60 cents per hour in New Zealand dollar. However, what encouraged me were these workers' good spirits and the fact that they seem to be happy with simply having the jobs. Pay-rise for these workers are not an issue at all in Good Partners since there is no problem at all in getting new recruits in the Industrial Park. What the company has failed to realize is that although the packaging and production phase only involves a minimum level of skill, loss of adept workers could also incur high costs for the company. For instance, it usually takes 2 to 3 months for a female recruit to become adept in packaging the Soft Flour Cake. Recruits who leave the company just after they start to become familiarized with the procedure will result in lower productivity in the company.
In the third week since I have joined the company, the night-shift first-line production supervisor has resigned. He has worked in Good Partner for six years and his resignation was approved promptly by the Human Resource Manager the day after he sent in the letter. He told me he felt that his contribution to the company was not appreciated. He has not received a pay-rise for two years and his salary is low compared to the people in the same position in other food manufacturing companies.
I have had heard talks in the office about replacing him with a newly recruited food technologist who is currently working in the Department of Quality Control.
Personally, I consider such a replacement an awful waste of the university education of the food technologist because the main job of the supervisor is only to oversee the workers.
4. Production
At the time when I entered the company, Good Partners have received a large number of orders and was operating 3 shifts a day. Apart from manufacturing products under the brand of Good Partners, the company is also the subcontractor of a number of other food companies as well as some supermarkets in Shanghai.
The planning of production is primarily done with the aid of Excel spreadsheet. The quantity and specification of products requested from customers are often received in a few weeks' advance. Available quantities on inventory of raw materials and packaging materials are then collected and if they are inadequate, the manager in charge of purchasing always makes phone calls to suppliers for more to be delivered. And the exact quantity and specification of products to be made is always determined in a few days' advance. The schedule is then sent to the first-line production supervisors, so on the day of the production the right raw materials will be taken out of stock and adequate number of workers will be available.
The production process is constantly monitored. At the end of the day, raw materials used are checked and products are counted. The efficiency of production is measured in a number of different ways. For Soft flour cake, it is expressed as the number of cakes produced with respect to 5 kg of flour used. And for the Pollock fish slice, it is measured as the weight of product in terms of 1 kg of fish paste used. This summarized information is what the production manager looks for when he starts work every morning, and he keeps a record of them so performance of daily production can be reviewed and checked against the past.
An interesting phenomenon I have observed is that over 60% of the products made during my stay are packaged under brands other than Good Partners. Good Partners operates under a Just-in-time inventory system, i.e. it produces only sufficient amount according to the size of order, not based on forecast of demands. Products are usually stored in the warehouse for a minimum period of time before they are delivered to customers, usually within 72 hours.
I was allowed to enter the manufacturing site without restriction, provided that I was accompanied by a staff and properly attired. However, I was kindly refused when I asked for the exact formulae of all the products. Although the Soft Flour Cake and Pollock fish slice have been in the market for quite a while, the company does not want to disclose any sensitive information for various reasons. Fortunately I was allowed to observe the actual production and take notes.
Figure 3 is the process flow chart for the manufacture of Soft flour cake.
Flour and water is mixed to make dough; eggs are ad added to the mixture.
Aeration: Soda bicarbonate is added to the dough a and the dough is being aerated at a controlled
temperature in the range of 35 to 37?C.
Frying: The aerated dough is cut into small and thin
pieces and fed into a travelling deep-fryer and fried
in palm oil with chemicals such as antioxidants
added.
Hot sugar solution such as sucrose and maltose is
used to coat the fried pieces in a rotating drum,
where workers stir the mixture to ensure thorough
mixing.
The pieces are put together and compressed into a
compact rectangular shape and then cut to smaller
cubes of Soft Flour Cake.
The finished product is packaged and stored.
Figure 3. Process flow chart for the manufacture of Soft flour cake.
Figure 4 shows the picture of the actual Soft flour cake.
Fig. 4 (a) Image of packaged Soft flour cake
Fig. 4 (b) Image of actual soft flour cake
Figure 5 shows the picture taken in the plant where the Soft flour cake is manufactured.
Fig.5 Manufacturing of the Soft flour cake.
Figure 6 is the process flow chart for the manufacture of Pollock fish slice.
Frozen fish paste used for the production is
received and inspected for its quality.
Frozen fish paste is allowed to thaw and its
temperature is monitored constantly. I
The slightly thawed fish paste is cut and blended
by a meat separator, and then squeezed to remove
most of the water. Food additives such as salt are
added at this stage.
The fish paste is then fed into a large machine
where it is molded into large, thin sheets and
heated by dry air at 120?C for 20 minutes.
The dried sheet of fish paste is received at the
other end of the machine and allowed to cool on
steel grill.
The finished product has to go through a metal
detector before it is packaged.
Figure 6. Process flow chart for the manufacture of Pollock fish slice.
Figure 7 shows the actual product of Pollock fish slice.
Fig. 7 (a) Image of packaged Pollock fish slice
Fig. 7(b) Image of actual Pollock fish slice
Figure 8 shows the pictures in the plant where Pollock fish slice is manufactured.
Fig. 8 Manufacturing of the Pollock fish slice.
The Intellectual Property of the company is quite limited due to its size. The way the products are produced is fairly traditional and the company merely relies on its experience and economy of scales (i.e. large volume production) to make profits. The brand "Good Partners" is a registered trademark and is protected from any imitation by law. R&D works aimed to improve the quality and reduce costs of the current products are constantly being undertaken, although on a very small scale. These have resulted in minor changes in the formulation of the products which were kept secret for fear of copycat action from competitors. The entry to the plant is guarded by security 24 hours a day and all visitors are required to register with the security staff.
5. Quality Control
The quality and safety of food have not really been a major issue in China in the past when it was still under severe poverty. However, the scene has changed dramatically as the economy develops. Living standard in China has improved greatly in all major aspects and consumers nowadays have more disposable incomes to spend on the "luxuries" of life besides basic needs. As a matter of course, competition in all sectors, including the food industry, has escalated. From the perspective of a food manufacturer, the quality and safety of the food product it manufactures is a very important factor to ensure its success in the market. Products with poor or inconsistent quality are doomed to fail in the market and the company can suffer loss. More seriously, company which produces unsafe products that damages consumer's health will be facing severe legal actions and will go out of business.
The Department of Quality Control in Shanghai Good Partners is headed by Mr. Jing, an experienced food microbiologist and it employs three other staffs with relevant diploma or degree in food science and technology. I have spent most of my time with this department since I thought it was the most relevant area to my degree.
The productions of the Soft flour cake and Pollock fish slice have a relatively long history and it seemed that in Good Partners, the control of these product's attributes such as texture, depends mainly on experience rather than on the underlying sciences. It has been found that by keeping various processing parameters such as the concentration of sugar solution and processing temperature constant, one could expect products with very consistent quality from batch to batch. So one of the main tasks of the QC team is to ensure that the right amount of ingredients have been used and standard processing conditions have been conformed to.
Ingredients from suppliers are always checked by visual observation and laboratory testing upon delivering. I was once given the task to determine the concentration of sucrose solution that has just arrived at the plant with a portable refractometer. The Quality Control staffs often spend most of the day in the plant checking various thermometers, room humidity and making sure workers are carrying out their tasks according to instructions. Sampling is another mean of control they use routinely. Samples of finished products are taken at regular intervals within a day. The samples are checked for their weight, shapes and textures and this information are recorded and filed. Should a defect be detected, the QC staff will have to find the root cause and correct it. I have volunteered for the sampling work and had a chance to taste the products and gave subjective evaluations of them.
Another aspect of the quality control is the control of food safety. Food related hazards can take many forms and roughly speaking they can be divided into biological, chemical and physical hazards ( Alli, 2004 ). In Good Partners, laboratory testing of microorgainsms is carried out routinely. The main microorganism they use as an indication of contamination of the product is Escherichia coli, a common coliform used also in the testing of water. The use of total counts of E.coli for judging the level of microbial contamination of food is a common practice in the industry (Alli, 2004). And if the number of E.coli is found to be greater than 30 per gram of product, the food is deemed unsafe to consume under Chinese law. The testing procedure makes use of a fermentation test, in which a solution prepared from the food products are mixed with molten agar nutrient and incubated at controlled temperature (Tortora et al., 2004). Being facultatively anaerobic. E.coli is able to ferment the sugar substrate to acid, which will change the colour of the pH indicator in the medium. There is also an inverted Durham tube in the fermentation tube. If gas is seen to be trapped in the Durham tube, it can be concluded that the total count of E. coli exceeds 30 (Tortora et al., 2004).
In fact, I was quite confused with all these testing procedures when I first observed it. It was not until after I started an introductory microbiology paper this year when things start to make sense to me. My responsibility in the lab was to clean and disinfect the testing equipments. This was done by washing the equipments with chemical disinfectants and then followed by heating the equipments at high temperatures. I was also asked to prepare reports on the lab results for the manager of the department and for filing. The most interesting work I found was the preparation of the nutrient medium for the fermentation test. In fact I have not realized it was molten agar at all until I smelt the same aroma in the microbiology lab in Massey this year.
Figure 9 shows various pictures taken in the laboratory of Shanghai Good Partners.
Fig. 9 (a) Quality Control staff testing samples collected.
Fig 9 (b) Chemical reagent and microbiological medium.
It seemed that the testing of chemical and physical hazards of products had not been given as much attention as the biological hazards in Good Partners. Good Partners usually obtain their raw materials from certified suppliers, and much of the raw materials were not tested after they were received. Accidents do happen, however. On one occasion, the metal detector has tested foreign objects for a particular batch of Pollock fish slice that has already been packaged. Upon opening the package, one of the QC staff has found metal filings in almost every pack of product in that batch. If not for the metal detector, the consequence for the company was disastrous. Although later on it has been found the problem was with the fish paste from one of the suppliers, this incident has clearly reminded the company that more needed to be done for its safety program.
5. Sales and Marketing
I have come to know the existence of Shanghai Good Partners since I was in primary school and I could still vividly remember the Good Partners's television commercial aired every night at the time in Channel Shanghai. It featured a young couple that had broken up after a having a huge row and then patched up very quickly because the guy apologized to his girlfriend with a pack of the Pollock fish slice. The commercial was accompanied by a song from one of the popular Taiwanese singers. At a time when Taiwan pop culture has found great favours among the youngsters in mainland China, the commercial with its theme song was a instant hit in China and very quickly the name of Shanghai Good Partners became well known. Consequently, Good Partners have enjoyed steady growth and its products have commanded a very high price.
Eleven years have passed since then and a lot of things have changed. During one of the lunch breaks I have had a chance to talk to the manager of Sales and Marketing. I was curious as to why Good Partner's advertising has not been as aggressive as before since its initial success has clearly demonstrated the power advertising wields in the market today. He pointed out to me that the business environment has drastically changed and advertising cost has been skyrocketing. Back in the early 1990s it took almost less than one third of the rate today to run a 60 second TV commercial on a major television channel. However in the present day almost every household has cable TV connection, from which viewers have more than 35 channels to choose from. When a TV programme is interrupted by a commercial, all a viewer has to do is to change to another channel and come back later. Furthermore, in order to reach more potential customers it is necessary to run the commercial on channels with relatively higher viewer ratings at a proper time. Naturally, the cost of doing this is again higher and almost not affordable to Good Partners.
Another change in the business environment compared to a decade ago occurred in the distribution channel. With the emergence of powerful supermarket chains, the structure of the distribution channel from manufacturers to consumers has changed. Many multinational retail giants such as Metro and Carrefour have invested heavily in major cities of China and domestic supermarkets have also grown rapidly in recent years. For SMEs such as Good Partners, relationship with these retailing giants is crucial (Seth& Randall, 1999). Unlike Coca-cola and Nestle, who are large and powerful companies themselves and are confident enough to negotiate with these retailing giants, small companies nowadays live virtually at the mercy of supermarkets. It is common practice for supermarkets to charge manufactures for the entry of their products. Sometimes the retailers also demand overriders, which happened frequently in the case of Good Partners. "An overrider is a discount, based on the volume of products sold over a period of time" (Seth & Randall, p279, 1999). These additional costs all directly lead to the lower profit margin on the part of the manufacturer, and yet the savings are ultimately passed to the retailers, not the consumers. Senior managers in China today, like Mr. Deng, have all started their careers at a time when the manufacturers were calling the shots and retailers were merely the followers. However the current situation is that manufacturers still need retailers to distribute their products, but retailers do not necessarily need all the manufacturers (Seth & Randall, 1999). It is a change the mangers in Shanghai Good Partners have found hard to come to term with, but in order for Good Partners to survive, they have to accept and learn the new rules.
The annual turnover of Shanghai Good Partners is at about 8 million US Dollars and this has stayed relatively constant for the past few years. According to the Mr. Deng, other Taiwanese companies that have invested in the mainland at around the same time have seen growth rate much faster than that of Good Partners. In fact, the profit margins of the Soft flour cake and Pollock fish slice have decreased over the years since the establishment of the company. This stagnant growth and decreasing profit margin have all occurred against the background of a rapidly developing economy and ever increasing purchasing power of the consumers. Significant sources of revenues of Good Partners come from manufacturing food products for other companies. These include many larger food-manufacturing companies as well as a couple of the above-mentioned powerful supermarkets in Shanghai. This strategy seems logical as being a subcontractor, Good Partners do have to spend heavily on marketing and promotion and yet sill can get reasonable returns. However in the long run the consequence is disastrous as the brand image of Good Partners is being slowly eroded away. An interesting observation I have made during a trip to a local supermarket is that of the 8 brands of Soft flour cake, 5 of them are in fact manufactured by Good Partners. And consumers often tend to choose these products rather than that of Good Partners despite the fact that they were at a higher price. One possible explanation could have been the heavy promotions of these brands by their companies, which have led the consumers to think that they are of better quality.
6. Research and Development
Due to its small size and limited capital, Good Partners is not committed to any major R&D work for developing new products. Recently a new production line manufacturing canned seafood was introduced to its plant in the city of Nantong, a port city in Eastern China. These canned seafood products already exist in the market and the company has sought extensive helps from outside sources during starting up. A project was also recently taken off to look into the possibility of developing sugar-free Soft flour cake to meet the ever-increasing health consciousness of some consumers. The result of the project was still being reviewed and kept confidential from non-managerial staffs. I was told one of the changes suggested was to replace the ingredient sucrose with artificial sweeteners such as soritol.
This was a positive move on the part of the company. Any product has a typical life cycle, which starts from the introduction stage through growth and maturity stage and finally enters the decline stage (Bamberger, 1994). The stagnant growth of Shanghai Good Partners revenue can be partly attributed to the maturity of its products since they have been in the market for a relatively long time. Existing products need to be modified to better suit consumers' fast-changing needs and new products will have to be developed to compensate for the declining market shares of the company (Bamberger, 1994). However, the company seemed reluctant to commit itself to developing new products, as can be seen from the fact that the food technologists it employs are mainly concerned with tasks of Quality Assurance.
Products in the category of snack foods are subjected to high level of competition. Multinational companies in China lead the industry in developing and commercialising new food products. And for any particular snack food such as Soft flour cake, there are many other substitutes consumer can choose from. So to maintain its market share, the company needs to diversify its product mix, rather than putting all the eggs in one basket (Bamberger, 1994). This is an important decision the company has to make. Although R&D requires significant investment in capital and expertise, it seems that there is no other way out.
7. Personal Evaluation
My experience in Shanghai Good Partners Co., Ltd was very valuable to me since this was the first time I have ever worked. Development in China's food sector is a direct reflection of the fast-changing and dynamic Chinese economy today. Up to now I have already been studying abroad for 7 years, first in Singapore and now in New Zealand. As China is becoming more and more materialistically abundant, I could see clearly the gap is getting ever closer between China and the first world countries.
Shanghai Good Partners is one of the millions of typical privately owned enterprises that have mushroomed in China after the its economic reform. It is subjected to the same market dynamics where force of demand and supply reigns the market elsewhere in the world. The company has its strength and weakness, which I have described briefly in the report but at a very superficial level.
I am not in the position to give any conclusive comment on the management structure of the company because it is so heavily influenced by the culture of China. However, my sympathy does go to the 300 or so part time workers who have worked so hard and yet received so little. When I was not needed in the laboratory, I have volunteered to help out in the palletization stage of the products. I also seized upon any opportunities I have to help the packaging workers.
The days I have spent with the Department of Quality Control was valuable to me. The staffs were very curious about my overseas education. I have made some good friends and learnt a lot from them. It has given me a clear idea of what is expected of a food technologist in industry. The General Manager has once admitted to me that what I have seen in Good Partners was not the most ideal way things should be carried out. The staffs in the QC department has also told me how much better some larger food-manufacturing companies were, in terms of their production capacities and manufacturing and quality control practices. I guess what I have observed in Good Partners was representative of the majority of food manufacturing companies in China. The regulations and laws governing the safety aspects of food are becoming more and more stringent and consumers of China are also becoming more and more sophisticated. These are all the challenges posed to people involved in the food business in China and it remains to be seen how fast the food industry as a whole can respond to them.
9. Conclusions and Recommendations
9.1 No clear job descriptions exist for each managerial staff and this is has resulted in ambiguousness of authority and responsibilities. A higher degree of formalization is needed in the company to overcome these problems.
9.2 The company lacks a mission statement and does not have any specified objectives for the future. It has also encountered difficulties in adapting itself to the current business environment and practices. The company needs to spend some time analysing the current market conditions, establish some realistic short-term and long-term objectives and formulate a set of strategies to reach these objectives.
9.3 There exists potential safety hazards in the manufacturing processes because the top management is not committed to creating a safe working environment. Also the welfare of the workers have been overlooked. The company needs to take the aspect of worker's safety more seriously.
9.4 The Quality Control team of the company is not effective with controlling the physical and chemical aspects of food hazards. More expertise and equipments are needed to address these inadequacies.
9.5 The Research and Development function in the company needs to be given more emphasis in the company, otherwise market share will fall and the business will suffer.
0. References
Alli, I. 2004: Food Quality Assurance; Principles and Practices. Boca Raton, CRC Press. 141p.
Seth, A.; Randall, G. 1999: The Grocers; the rise and rise of the supermarket chains. London, Kongan Page. 331p.
Bamberger, I. ed. 1994: Product/Market Strategies of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing Limited. 417p.
Tortora, G. J.; Funke, B. R.; Case, C. L. 2004: Microbiology; An Introduction. 8th edition. San Francisco, Benjamin Cummings.
