The Decision Reaching Process within Product Elimination : A case study at PharmaCompany

Sammanfattning: Globalization and market competition drives new product development. As a consequence, companies are forced to eliminate products more frequently. However, the process of eliminating products is often overlooked both in academia and in practice. Omitting the product elimination process can lead to production inefficiencies and unnecessary costs of retaining the products. The results in this thesis discovers inconsistencies in the present product elimination process at PharmaCompany. The inconsistencies are grouped in the four categories: Interaction & Collaboration, External Analysis, Resource Prioritization & Decision Making, Proactivity Analysis. The main suggested improvements comprise a clearer internal communication, increased documentation and restructuring the current process design. In addition, reframing the current elimination process to emulate the academical approach is suggested in order to further legitimize the elimination process and increase interest on the area. The thesis concludes that a more standardized elimination process can lead to increased efficiency by adopting additional filters to identify and analyze underperforming products. Furthermore, the thesis increases awareness of the topic of product elimination and enhances the knowledge within the research area. By linking the product elimination process to the resource allocation process, the thesis marks the overall neglect of the topic, and gives insights on the need for increased attention towards the product elimination process.