Business Consulting: A Case Study on Airdri Limited

This report explores the role of business consulting in improving operations and solving problems for Airdri Limited, a leading manufacturer of hand dryers. It provides an overview of the client and the problems they are facing, breaks down the problems through analysis, and presents important areas to clients. The report also highlights the top three issues faced by Airdri Limited and justifies their rankings.

Business Consulting

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Clarifying about client and problems they are facing..................................................................1
By using research, breaking down of problems through analysing and presenting important
areas to clients..............................................................................................................................2
Top three issues and justification for their ranking.....................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Business consulting is mentioned as the profession that provides expert advices for
various areas. They majorly operate activities with different clients for planning, solving problem
along with strategies which results in assisting them for developing business knowledge and
required skills (Aronoff and Ward, 2016). The consultant understands pertaining circumstances
of company and provide valuables for improving operations along with recommends effective
solutions. For understanding business consulting, Airdri Limited is considered for the report. It is
leading manufacturer for hand dryers and designs the products for user comfort. The report
includes information about the organisation and problems faced by it. It further breaks the
problems through critically analysing as well as presenting areas of importance to different
clients. At last, it includes top three issues faced by entity along with justification for their top
rankings.
MAIN BODY
Clarifying about client and problems they are facing
About the client: The client of business consulting is Airdri Limited that is
manufacturing business in UK. The headquarters of the client company are situated at
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom since 1974. The organisation emphasises on manufacturing
highly reliable, beautifully designs products that suits the wash-rooms of clients as well as
sparkle imagination as per the realised terms for growing range of hand dryers. It was established
by Peter Phillips together with Peter Allen. It provides innovative, attractive and sustainable
hand dryers that are energy efficient, creates negligible noise, reliable, ease of service, limited
energy consumption and many more. With time passage, the company has achieved expertise
and has explored various growth areas. In manufacturing industry, various changes have evolved
in recent timings due to which entities performing activities within it faces diverse problems.
Problem faced by Airdri Limited
All companies faces some of other problem while working in industry. In context to
Airdri Limited, one of major problem that it is facing is operational flaws (Biech, 2019). As
respective client deals in manufacturing of hand dryers and there are various situations when
some inappropriate work is performed that causes flaws in its operational system. For instance,
when poor technique is used or implemented within processes related to designing or
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manufacturing hand dryer then it will cause huge mistakes in final product that is hand dryer
resulting in ineffectiveness in other operations too. Hence, operation flaw is the major problem
that client is facing in present era.
By using research, breaking down of problems through analysing and presenting important areas
to clients
Through using proper research technique, it is analysed that the problem of operational
flaw is due to various reasons which are further break down into various aspects that are main
causes of problem such as overcapacity, skilled labour shortage, changes in automation,
maintaining inventory level and internet of things (Grabowski and Stawasz, 2017) . Areas of
importance for Airdri Limited are its target customers, competitors, influencing factor from
external environment and market. These further broken problems are as follows with importance
of areas for client.
Targetted customers: The one of important area for Airdri limited is its targetted
customer as providing them the hand dryers will help in achieving organisational objectives.. But
at same time, considering the problem of operational flaw due to shortage of skilled labour,
respective client fails to present its valuable hand dryers in front of targetted customers. The
personnel that work in this manufacturing unit are not skilled or lacks proper knowledge for
working so to design and manufacture the organisational products according to needs of targetted
customers. The company lacks engineers, technicians, managers and many skilled authorities. At
present it has limited skilled manufacturing workers and among them some will retire in coming
years.
Market: The client performs activities in UK market so to gain recognition and attain
sustainability. As breaking the major problem into pieces, it is analysed that overcapacity is one
of piece (Laudien and Daxböck, 2017). It is because of over-expenditure which damages cash
flow addition to result in wastage. Like all organisations, Airdri Limited is also experiencing
situations such as ups and downs in the market. The entity has huge production of variations of
hand dryers then the demand in market. When organisation produces commodities in bulk lots
which is excess then the demand then it causes overcapacity problem. In context to respective
client, hand dryers of various ranges and styles are manufactured in mass quantity and their
demand are low because of which it is facing overcapacity problem.
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Technological factor: Technology is advancing due to which it is considered as
influencing factor in external market. By using research aspect, it is analysed that technological
factor causes changes in automation as when new updated technology is used in opeartion then
there will be operational flaws (Nissen, Nissen and Rauscher, 2019). Automation includes usage
of computerised control systems for production and material processing in efficient manner. Due
to availability of advanced techniques, huge automation changes are faced by Airdri Limited in
their hand-dryer machines. As new and advanced types of techniques are available in market that
results in changes in automation that are generally expensive as well as unaffordable by Airdri
Limited as it is small sized entity that generates limited revenue. Hence, automation changes is
huge problem for the client.
Competitors: Competitors plays important role for the client. As there are huge entities
that performs activities in manufacturing industry and to compete with them, the entity fails to
maintain required inventory level for different hand dryers. While using research, it has been
analysed that maintaining inventory level for variants of hand-dryers as per the competitors
results in causing operational flaw at workplace. So, while breaking the problem it was found
that maintaining inventory level for variants of hand-dryers is one of piece causing the major
issue. Due to ups and downs against competitors, business concerns faces problem related to
managing appropriate inventory level for variety of hand dryers (Sheingate and Sheingate, 2016).
Facing inventory problem is now a days common in manufacturing sector. In context to Airdri
Limited, it fails to maintain inventory level as there is no skilled staff for preparing spreadsheets
and when proper spreadsheets are not prepared then level of inventory are not properly
maintained. Moreover, manual inventory tracking or inadequate forecasting are some reasons
that causes problem for maintaining inventory level at desired state.
Top three issues and justification for their ranking.
According to above analysis, it is found that client company is facing following top
issues:
Automation changes: The client company is facing automation change problem because
of new updated technologies availability. Being a small sized firm, the client generates limited
revenue and because of it it is very uneconomical for it to implement latest automations in its
operation. Hence, it is ranked as top problem as automation change causes disturbances in
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procedures related to manufacturing of effective hand-dryers due to which problem of flaws
arises in operations.
Maintaining inventory level: The other problem that client entity is facing is
maintaining inventory level for various hand-dryers. For instance, when manufacturing
organisation is not able to meet desired inventory level then it creates disturbances in operations
for various hand dryers that results in flaws in operation. It is ranked in top problem because
failures in maintaining of inventory level causes erosion of flows, stocks of to much products,
limits cash inflows and holds huge risks.
Skilled labour shortage: It is also among top problem which client organisation is facing
in present time. The company do not have skilled technicians, engineers, designers and many
more for concentrating on designing and manufacturing areas. It ranked on top from other
problems as shortage of skilled labour affects recovery as well as growth pace. In addition, when
entity do not have required skilled staff then its various operations are performed in inefficient
and mismanage form (Uhl and Gollenia, 2016).
CONCLUSION
The above report concludes that business consulting plays significant role in providing
consultancy services in order to improve organisational operations via assessing problems as
well as recommending effective solutions to them. These businesses provides their expert
thoughts in various areas including human resources, security concerns and many more. Business
concerns faces huge problems while executing their operations in the dynamic situations. The top
problems that they faces includes skilled labour shortage, automation changes and maintenance
of inventory level.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals:
Aronoff, C. and Ward, J., 2016. Family business governance: Maximizing family and business
potential. Springer.
Biech, E., 2019. The New Business of Consulting: The Basics and Beyond. John Wiley & Sons.
Grabowski, W. and Stawasz, E., 2017. The role of business consulting in creating knowledge and
formulating a strategy of development in Polish micro-enterprises. JEEMS Journal of
East European Management Studies. 22(3). pp.374-396.
Laudien, S. M. and Daxböck, B., 2017. Business model innovation processes of average market
players: a qualitative‐empirical analysis. R&D Management. 47(3). pp.420-430.
Nissen, V., Nissen, V. and Rauscher, 2019. Advances in consulting research. Springer
International Publishing.
Sheingate, A. and Sheingate, A. D., 2016. Building a business of politics: The rise of political
consulting and the transformation of American democracy. Oxford University Press.
Uhl, A. and Gollenia, L. A. Eds., 2016. A handbook of business transformation management
methodology. Routledge.
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