Barilla Spa

Executive Summary

Barilla SpA is in the business of Pasta production since 1875. It has been a family owned business for the most part of last century (except for an 8 year run when it was sold off to “outsiders”). The family has been keenly interested in making this a state-of-art manufacturing facility for pasta, and for achieving this they have invested heavily in production facilities and can now boast of the most advanced manufacturing unit for Pasta in Italy.

Barilla revolutionized the industry with its marketing strategy. They believed in instant product recall and hence gave higher importance on the packaging of the product along with quality.

Because of their continuous efforts, Barilla SpA has become world’s largest producer in the year 1990. 35% of the pasta sold anywhere in Italy is actually a production of Barilla! Apart from this, Barilla also has a 29% share of Italian Bakery products.

In one of their attempts to streamline the delivery process, Barilla has been looking for a new distribution system which they christened as “Just In Time Delivery” (JITD), this concept is pretty much similar to JIT manufacturing process made famous by Japanese firms. However, since the inception of the idea, Barilla team is encountering a number of hurdles from both outsiders as well as from its own sales force and other employees.

In the analysis given below we focus on the JITD and other options available with Barilla and try to come up with a conclusion which, in our opinion, is rational and should be followed.

Salient Features:

• Barilla offers pasta products under three brands :–

o Barilla brand (32% market share)

o Voiello brand & Braibanti brand (high priced segment, remaining 3% market share)

• It is organized into seven divisions :-

o Three pasta divisions

o Bakery Product Division

o Fresh Bread Division

o Catering Division

o International Division

• Size of pasta...