Business Needs
ICC should use Customer Intimacy strategy:

• working with customers in designing products
• sole-source design and production can yield 150% average profit
• custom-design group wants to increase design & production from 60% to 80%
• specific tools are designed for each customer
• if ICC is involved in designing tools, cost of designing would be 15% lower on average
• ICC could use the research talent it has to produce products for a ready-market or improve customers' products
• ICC should develop product with customers, design production tools, and schedule production runs with each product

ICC should limit itself to mainly manufacturing products that it helps design. Since custom-design is between 60 and 80 percent of business, it should keep other production to about 15 to 20 percent, catered to regular customers. It should design products with customers and produce them. Also it should research products for a ready-market and innovations to improve customers' products. This change from producing parts that others designed to mainly producing parts in-house would focus the company on customer intimacy. ICC has all the right tools to develop and produce exactly what the customer wants and needs. It would also smooth out the fabrication shop with a more average flow of production, while keeping productive during slow times.

ICC should develop a system where the CAD designs can be transmitted back and forth from customer to ICC, when the design is set the materials can be ordered and the job scheduled while the tools are being made. This would all be held in a customer database that also shows environmental and performance requirements for customers. The database should track the order via a customer log-in web site. The web site should have information about research and developments for ready-market products.
This project was done with Sean Beebe, Cassie Fults, Chris Robinson, and Adrian Wright, all San Diego State Information Systems graduates.