Currently, none of the company’s competitors has a production facility in Latin America. To reach this untapped market, the chief executive officer (CEO) is considering opening an additional manufacturing facility in Latin America. The operations management team has been directed to analyze the factors (including global) that need to be considered when deciding where to locate a new facility and report the recommended factors for consideration to the CEO. The team will also need to analyze how a life cycle assessment will help the company reduce its ecological impact, including making a case to the CEO that the benefits are worth funding the effort. The company has the following four goals for establishing a new facility:
Increasing its customer base in the untapped Latin American market
Reducing the company’s ecological footprint
Reducing production cost
Enabling multicultural collaboration opportunities between the operation’s functional teams (marketing and sales, finance, and operations) in the U.S. and Latin America facilities
By answering the bullet points below, your operations management team will analyze the factors (including global) that need to be considered when deciding on where to locate the new facility and show how a life cycle assessment will help the company reduce its environmental impact, including making a case to the CEO that the benefits are worth funding the effort.