Case study: Airborne Express

Discussion Questions:1. Using the Worth Chain Analysis, determine the primary & & assistance activities of AirborneExpress.

First I'm going to tell something about the primary activities of Airborne Express. The main activities exist of incoming logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and as last after-sales service.

Incoming logistics: They use road and air. After the choice up, it goes to the significant center in Wilmington.

Operations: The operations are the shipment of approximately 900000 packages.

Outbound logistics: The delivery of the plans from the hub to the shipment location.

Marketing and sales: Targeting logistics supervisors of significant carriers.

After-sales service: Making use of their web website to track their delivery and the call center automation.

Second, The assistance Activities, they include personnels, accounting and finance operations, innovation, and procurement.

Human resources: "strait-laced, penny-wise and conservative "Firm infrastructure: Their fleet has 13 300 vans, 175 airplanes and their own airport.

Innovation: Airborne utilizes its Freight on-line control and Update System (FOCUS) but in general they wait with investments till shows clear advantage for the consumer.

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Procurement: The use of their aircraft fleet2. What are Airborne Express' essential abilities? What is its core competence?Airborne Express targeted business that concentrated on the shipping of large volume of immediate products, mainly to other service places. Their most crucial abilities are that, Airborne Express is the only one who has an airport and for that reason didn't need to pay for landing charges, nor did it face any barriers to customizing the center to its needs. Airborne has build a storage facility space who developed the ability to receive orders as late as 2 am and have actually items provided the exact same day.

Airborne has a patent on his cargo containers who fitted through a passenger door of an air craft and therefore did not needed a cargo door. Airborne could fill his aircraft roughly 80% full and not 65%-70% as his competitors. An other advantage of Airborne is that they could use the trucks more often than their competitors for the long-haul portion of a delivery and this was estimated to have costs who were 1/3 of the costs of owning and operating a similar amount of aircraft capacity. Airborne did things to offer a low price and was known for that. Airborne created a code for one of his biggest clients Xerox so that those packages would be delivered first (8 am.)Airborne core competence is to offer a good and fast service at a low price and they can do that because they are able to cut in their costs.

3. How and why has the express mail industry structure evolved in recent years? How have the changes affected small competitors?Evolutions:-Other kind of deliveries and more focus on speed and price.

-Higher volumes and decreases of price-A larger public uses this industry-The calculations of the optimal route with information systems for speed and low price-Track shipment-The customers became more difficult and started to ask more from the companies and wanted to have as much information as possible at all time.

Small competitors have a rough time because they have to compete with the larger and better organist companies. Big companies have advantages like economies of scale, bargain power,…. The big companies don't use all their full capacity all the time and they come the small companies in. They can buy capacity from the big ones. So the big companies can reduce their costs and the small companies can play in the express mail industry game.

4. How has Airborne survived, and recently prospered, in its industry? What must Robert Brazier, Airborne's President and COO, do in order to strengthen the company's position?Airborne is the third largest player in the express mail industry and even with recent strikes at rival UPS, he isn't able to gain more market share from FedEx and UPS. To strengthen the company's position, Airborne has to:-Airborne has an advantage with the usage of his trucks because the most of his volume are in the afternoon or second day deliveries. Airborne has to enlarge and develop his ground transport and the services that he there offers.

-Has to find a partner or an other airline to share the facility expenses of the airport.

-Airborne has to create strong and long term alliances (Roadway Package was a good start) to compete with FedEx and UPS-Upgrade and invest in his services (customers, transport, delivery on time,…) as much as possible-Keep on focusing on the large accounts of corporation (like Xerox)Bibliography: - Strategic Management: Concepts, Second Edition (2008), by Mason A. Carpenter and Wm.

Gerard Sanders, Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN-10: 0132341409; ISBN-13: 9780132341400- Harvard online, buy case study Airborn Express