MSA Safety Incorporated SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by MSA Safety Incorporated managers to do a situational analysis of the firm . It is an important technique to analyze the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) MSA Safety Incorporated is facing in its current business environment.

The MSA Safety Incorporated is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. MSA Safety Incorporated maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the MSA Safety Incorporated to develop four types of strategies:

• SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
• WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
• ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
•  WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect MSA Safety Incorporated strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to MSA Safety Incorporated SWOT Analysis

Strengths of MSA Safety Incorporated – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, MSA Safety Incorporated has numerous strengths that enable it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of MSA Safety Incorporated are –

Read - MSA Safety Incorporated Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – MSA Safety Incorporated has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to MSA Safety Incorporated products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – MSA Safety Incorporated is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. MSA Safety Incorporated is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years MSA Safety Incorporated has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of MSA Safety Incorporated just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.

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Weakness of MSA Safety Incorporated – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where MSA Safety Incorporated can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a firm can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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• Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry MSA Safety Incorporated has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of MSA Safety Incorporated
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of MSA Safety Incorporated are below the industry average.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though MSA Safety Incorporated is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
• The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. MSA Safety Incorporated has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for MSA Safety Incorporated – External Strategic Factors

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• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for MSA Safety Incorporated to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for MSA Safety Incorporated to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for MSA Safety Incorporated. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable MSA Safety Incorporated to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the MSA Safety Incorporated . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as MSA Safety Incorporated to increase its profitability.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided MSA Safety Incorporated an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of MSA Safety Incorporated’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.

Threats MSA Safety Incorporated Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the MSA Safety Incorporated profitability.
• Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for MSA Safety Incorporated   in those markets.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of MSA Safety Incorporated
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to MSA Safety Incorporated’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• Liability laws in different countries are different and MSA Safety Incorporated may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for MSA Safety Incorporated

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

• Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
• SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
• The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of MSA Safety Incorporated
• SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
• SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of MSA Safety Incorporated

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis MSA Safety Incorporated managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of MSA Safety Incorporated

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

• M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
• A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
• O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
• L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
• R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)