Research about transportation. I want you to calculate the center of gravity of each location giving them a rating in each region,

“Wow. I have had quite an interesting, ever-changing career with Gravier Industries,” thought Logistics Manager Randall Wesley as he walked up the stairs to the office of CEO Douglas Matthews. “This company is growing in leaps and bounds.  Every time I turn around there is another opportunity to enhance our supply chain, increase revenues and profit. As the company grows I’ve moved up nicely in the organization.  I wonder what Doug has in mind.  He seemed delighted last week when I developed that ‘Future is Now!’ proposal to help grow the company.  If I keep it up I will be Vice President in no time.”

Wesley enters the office of Matthews.  “Doug. You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, Randall, please come in,” replied Matthews, “Great news.  I met with the Board of Directors yesterday and presented my ‘Future is Now’ proposal to expand Gravier Industries internationally.  They agree that the time is right. To remain competitive, our current international customers are insisting we have a local presence near them, and, if we position correctly we can not only increase sales with our current international customers but harvest additional sales of our products with new international customers.”

“Key points all from the proposal I developed for you.  I am delighted they liked it.  Now comes the hard part.  LOCATION, Location, location.  That pretty much sums it up,” exclaimed Wesley.  “We need to set up international regional offices that can also support distribution to customers in the region. Promise me you won’t go cheap and take the best ‘deal’ touted by a commission-driven agent in the region.  There have been many mistakes made in determining the ‘right’ location for a regional office or plant location.  Whomever does this has to consider so many things. Miss one and you end up in a Great Mistakes textbook.”

Matthews bristled, “When we determine the location of our regional offices the goal is to maximize profits, period.  Either through optimally positioning our offices relative to our current customers or through cost minimization.  Either way, our location analysis must quantify ’why’ we select the location that we select.  This will certainly NOT be taken lightly.”

Wesley pointed out, “There are several key categories that we must factor into the decision including infrastructure, communications (including quality of internet connections), the business climate in the region, quality of transportation services and location of the office to support our current customers, health services and ‘Quality of Life’ for our employees, and finally, quality of local financial services for banking and regulatory management.”

“Right.  And that is a lot to consider.  I fear we will find there are other considerations as well,” responded Douglas, “And aren’t some of the categories more important than others?”

“Yes, each category should be weighted by importance.  Ask five managers in our functional silos to weight the categories and you will get five weightings different than my own.  Everyone has their own agenda so the weighting should come out of your office,” pointed out Randall.

“Agreed,” said Matthews grimacing. He grabs a pad of paper and begins writing.  “OK, here is how I would weight the categories on your list by importance so we can get started.  Wow, there are so many possible locations. Where do we begin?

“One way to simplify this is to only consider cities where we presently have customers,” stated Wesley, “That will narrow down the number of choices.  We need to initially get a foothold in the region and then later, as the markets develop in the region, we can always move to a different location. ‘Optimal’ will be a constantly moving target anyway. We just have to start somewhere.”

Matthews delegated, “Here is our customer list (Appendix One).  Assign a task force team to go over your categories and my customer list and make a location recommendation for each region.  We should be able to show the Board of Directors which functions had input to the decision and why their function was selected.”

“Make sure to consider every category and most importantly quantify the importance of each option in each category.  Your team likely will have to hone their internet search skills to support any conjecture. I want visibility how you quantify each area to rank the cities.”

“After that, the task force will need to create a spreadsheet which combines the category ranks into an overall recommendation to justify the best location.  I might want to tweak my weightings later so their spreadsheet will be important. Remember that I have limited spreadsheet skills so have pity on this technological dinosaur and create an easy-to-understand, easy-to-use spreadsheet for me.”

If the task force does a great job quantifying, and supporting their numbers for the ranks in each category, then I should be able to use the spreadsheet to incorporate my weightings to get to the final recommendation. Most importantly, if the task force completely cites sources used when they developed their scores we can use the model to replicate the process to select locations in other regions as well.”

“Plan on giving me a 15 minute presentation of the task force recommendation for both regions and provide a written executive-style report that I can share with the Board of Directors. Make sure you quantify each variable.  Do a great job on this, Randall, and your career will continue to flourish.”

As he walked down the stairs to his office, Wesley started to develop an action plan:

APPENDIX ONE

International Customer Locations