Case Study

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External Client Consulting Project

For

Sen Western Wholesale Lumber Ltd.

By

Ryan Sengara Jason Sandhu Amit Aujla Ervin Estrada Aaron Sandhar

ENTR 3110 – R50

Dr. Anthony Williams

November 30, 2011

Executive Summary

Sen Western is a family owned lumber company based out of South Vancouver, which was founded in 1969, and is currently owned and operated by the Sengara family. The real estate and development market has changed significantly over the last decade significantly affecting the company’s operations and revenues. Decreasing profit margins in multifamily residential units has forced the company to focus on the more lucrative single-family housing market, and an expansion into consumer products. Due to the more labour intensive nature of these tasks, as well as the diverse language skills required to service Vancouver’s various ethnic communities, and the significant increase in business (revenue has increased from as little as $7 million per year a decade ago, to as much as $29 million per year) the company has expanded rapidly.

The company’s expansion has not come without issues. For the first time in company history, Sen Western has middle management, a role that the ownership is still adjusting to. The owners have had a problem with empowering middle management and providing them the autonomy, authority, and a clear description of their responsibilities and therefore middle management has had a problem doing their jobs. Furthermore, the owners believe that employees are afraid of offering critical feedback about the organization’s operations or other potential issues due to the soft employment market.

As a part our business unit analysis, we drew several conclusions from the feedback of employees, management and ownership and areas where the company could improve. In particular, we found that owners do not seem to trust middle management, reluctance on the part of some employees to step outside of their job...