Sanmina Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Sanmina Corporation is one of the leading companies in its industry. Sanmina Corporation maintains its dominant position in market by critically 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.


Order Now - Sanmina Corporation SWOT Analysis
Check out- Sanmina Corporation PESTEL / PEST & Environment Analysis
Article continues after advertisement


The SWOT Analysis framework helps 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 called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Sanmina Corporation 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 main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Sanmina Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Sanmina Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Sanmina Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Sanmina Corporation has numerous strengths that help 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 Sanmina Corporation are –

Read - Sanmina Corporation Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
Article continues after advertisement

• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Sanmina Corporation products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Sanmina Corporation has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Sanmina Corporation just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• 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 – Sanmina Corporation 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.
• High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years Sanmina Corporation has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• Successful track record of integrating complimentary firms through mergers & acquisition. It has successfully integrated number of technology companies in the past few years to streamline its operations and to build a reliable supply chain.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Sanmina Corporation has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.

---

Weakness of Sanmina Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Sanmina Corporation can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

Article continues after advertisement

• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Sanmina Corporation is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Sanmina Corporation has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• 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.
• Not very good at product demand forecasting leading to higher rate of missed opportunities compare to its competitors. One of the reason why the days inventory is high compare to its competitors is that Sanmina Corporation is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• 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 Sanmina Corporation
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Sanmina Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
• 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. Sanmina Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for Sanmina Corporation – External Strategic Factors

Article continues after advertisement

• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Sanmina Corporation products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Sanmina Corporation in other product categories.
• Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Sanmina Corporation to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Sanmina Corporation.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Sanmina Corporation an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Sanmina Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Sanmina Corporation to capture new customers and increase its market share.

Threats Sanmina Corporation Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
• 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.
• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Sanmina Corporation   in those markets.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Sanmina Corporation profitability.
• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Sanmina Corporation

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Sanmina Corporation

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 Sanmina Corporation
• 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.

Article continues after advertisement

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sanmina Corporation

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 Sanmina Corporation 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 Sanmina Corporation

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.

Buy Custom Essay and Term Paper on SWOT Analysis / Matrix , Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sanmina Corporation

Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)