Overview
Backwell is a family group company established in the year 2007 by the charismatic owner Ken Backwell. Ken Backwell started the company as an assembly unit for phones. It has been successful as an assembly unit with an ever widening market over the years.
Backwell IXL worked with big phone manufacturing companies in the past, including Nokia and Samsung. The company is now able to manufacture phone parts like earphones and charger for the above mentioned phone companies.
This is a task that has placed the company in a very critical position in this industry of phone manufacturing. Therefore, Backwell IXL is trying to position itself to be a future phone manufacture of its own.
Organisational Structure
Backwell is organised in a manner that allows reducing employee load on the company’s revenue. It comprises of a President of the company which since it is a family company is a position occupied by Ken Backwell himself. He is assisted by departmental managers who ensure the goals of the company are reached and the policies of the company are implemented.
The departmental managers are only two: manufacturing manager and marketing manager. The manufacturing department of the company is responsible for the production of the phone parts while the marketing department is responsible for marketing the company’s products.
Below these managers are the staff members who are responsible for implementing departmental policies. This kind of an organisational structure has enabled the company to promote competition between the two departments since there are only two of them. Each of the departments hires, fires and promotes their own staff members to ensure a stiff competition between the departments.
Company Strategy
The company has a strategy of becoming a complete phone manufacturing company by the end of 2016. The strategy employed by the company includes ensuring a consistency in the manufacture of the phone parts and producing their own brand by the year 2014.
Producing their own brand of phone parts will put them at a critical point when achieving their goal. It is also important to note that Backwell IXL currently partners with big and successful phone manufacturing companies.
Nokia and Samsung are known as the two best manufacturing companies and as such they are likely to play a big role in shaping Backwell to be a phone manufacturer on their own. This strategy may succeed if it is followed up properly, as well as focused solely on the manufacturing of phone parts.
Product Development
Development of the products by Backwell is often a closely followed process bearing that the company is producing phone parts for phones, that is not a manufacturing process. This means that design of the products is dictated by the phone manufacturers, in this case, Samsung and Nokia.
It is critical to consult with the phone manufacturers on the production level on a regular basis to ensure that the final product mimics the standards set by the phone manufacturers, as well as population. Design is mostly dictated by the phone manufacturer but the quality is determined by the demand of clients.
Quality Management at IXL
The quality of the products manufactured by the company is to be of the highest quality which is guaranteed by the inspection of the final products. The products go through two sets of inspection with the first one being done by the company itself, by the manufacturing department, while the second inspection is done by phone manufacturer that ordered phone parts, that is Nokia or Samsung.