Manufacturing Strategy for Survival – Tata Steel is selling all of its UK operations, write a viable recovery plan as a potential investor interested in the WELSH sites. This includes Tata’s Port Talbot, Trostre, Llanwern and Newport.

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Hello. Please review the attached assignment brief. Welsh steel production is in a difficult position, as cheap, overproduced Chinese steel is being ‘dumped’ in the UK market. Write a paper explaining a detailed plan to purchase the Welsh operations, and what would be required to ensure a competitive, successful future is practical attainable for these sites. Discuss grades of steel that are most appropriate for these sites to make, and whether some variants hold more value or demand than others. Consider the UK cost of energy to industrial users compared to the costs for EU, Chinese and US manufacturers etc. Consider discussing plans for a large tidal lagoon renewable energy source in Swansea, which is close to Port Talbot. Discuss what involvement or changes may be required by either the Welsh Assembly Government or the UK Government. Consider potential plans being put forward for Tata UK, such as a management buy-out plan, and plan put forward by Liberty Steel for the Port Talbot site. You may put forward significant plans such as combining smaller sites centralizing in Port Talbot (due to it’s size), it is okay to suggest significant investment to enable the operations to produce at a competitive level, so long as it can be justified with estimated pay-off terms etc.
The plan should not only give comprehensive details as to how the operations become Lean and/or Agile manufacturing centers, but also discuss what is needed to become a small but extremely powerful force in global steel production.