Graff - Pinkert Case Study

The 70 year old family owned Graff- Pinkert Company has since its establishment been dedicated to the turned parts industry. It is an international leader in automatic screw machines, rotary transfer machine and cnc/Swiss sales, service and parts. The company began during the Second World War. At the time, Aaron Pinkert’s cousin Leonard Graff took helped him to run his screw machine shop. Leonard’s main responsibility was to locate machines US factories required for the war effort. Graff-Pinkert was housed in an area that was formerly a pickle factory. As a measure of growth, the company has sold over 5,000 automatic screw machines across the world since 1941. The company is now located in a modern 25,000 square foot facility in Oak Forest, Illinois as compared to the 5000 square foot where it first started (Graff-Pinkert sales, 2009).

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Company

The way Graff-Pinkert treats their customers is a huge strength on its own that contributes towards their reliability. Very few companies across the globe can accept returning of their products due to faults. This company embraces company satisfaction to a point that a customer can return the respective product for fixing.

Another of the company’s strength is its diverse nature; in such a way that they deal with various areas of the industry. As much as they can produce new products, they can also rebuild and recondition machines.

Another weakness is when it comes to buying a used machine and letting it to lie in the site. This means wastage of space and resources that could have been utilized elsewhere.

This company deals with various aspects of machines. Research has however shown that specialization has been one of the most important trends used in the machinery business since 1940’s. Those who have had a narrow focus on a particular type of equipment have really grown. Graff-Pinkert deals with so many areas of machinery making it to miss out on the advantage of specialization.

Challenges

The market of used machinery is not perfect owing to the fact that there a number of determining variables. The variables include condition, age, market timing, attachments, size, technological advancement, location and manufacturer. All these factors affect the quality or rather value of the particular machine in question.

Competition from other companies is also another challenge that this company has faced.  The nature of used machinery companies is such that there are a few mergers. This is so because the companies are rarely sold. In the event that the owner passes on, and there are no heirs to take it up, the inventory is liquidated and thus the business disappears. This situation hinders the advantage of mergers which helps to realize faster growth of companies. Other competitors in this industry include Adams Machinery, Lieberstein and Muslin and Angus (Graff, 2009).

Recommendations

Graff-Pinkert & Company should continue working on customer satisfaction. It is only through customer satisfaction that a company can expand its market share and be able to move to another level in terms of sales. When customers are satisfied, the company’s image as a whole is also boosted.

The company should be careful when purchasing used machines to avoid cases of useless machinery lying in the site. Idle machinery that does not have any use wastes company funds. A lot of space for both storage and expansion is also wasted when a company has idle machinery.

Conclusion

Graff-Pinkert & Company embraces full customer satisfaction. This is an ideal virtue which helps the company entirely on major decision making actions. Customer satisfaction cultivates trust and reliability of the customers. This eventually translates into increased volumes of sales and growth of the company in general.