DECCAN FOODS LIMITED Deccan Foods Limited is a company which produces a large number of products such as cereals, biscuits,

spices, jams and jellies, and syrups etc. So, the companys product line structure is similar to companies like Procter & gamble, Hindustan Unilever Etc.The Company has a large national market and export small quantities to neighboring countries. It has 75 plants and 70 products till date and are continuously growing with the increasing demand. All these products hold a good market shares in the country. Gross sales of all the products amounts to Rs.25 crore. The management of these products and plants is centralized in the hands of Chairman, President, and 4 vice presidents who are responsible for Sales, Production, Purchasing and Law and they make-up the topmost executive level of the company. Work Distribution

Sales, Advertising and Sales Promotion- Sales Vice President. Production & Plant operations - Production Vice President. Purchasing- Purchasing Vice President.

Public relation, Law and corporate functions- Law Vice President Finance- President. And it is the responsibility of each Vice- President to take care of the employee-employer relationship of his functional department. As the company was set by combining several food products organizations and it has acquired other since then. So, it has a very high degree of workload with same numbers of departmental heads. But in this kind of situation, it has some advantages and some disadvantages as well. Advantages - cost saving technique, time saving; like wholesale technique if one salesman could cover an entire line on one cell as against a number of salesmen. This principle has been retained and has proved successful as the company has grown. But it has some disadvantages as well like one salesman will have a lot of work load. So for a higher growth of the company every product will require special attention but would not be able to get the required attention. Also, Heads of the field sales organization will reports to the Vice President for taking care of the proper promotions of every product in the line which again overburdens the Sales vice president. For proper management, each product or product group is assigned to one of the 20 product managers. Each product manager is responsible for his products sales only. He specializes in pricing and sales appeal quotient of his product or product Group. He reports to sales vice president and he can curtail any efforts of the product managers if he didnt like their proposal. All advertising is coordinated and placed by the Advertising manager and finalized by the Sales Vice President. Each plant is operated by a Superintendent in-charge of wages, maintenance, cost, output, quantity, and other operations. The volume of production in is scheduled by the production control group reporting to the Production Vice President. Final schedules are set after consulting the Sales Vice president.

The business of this company has more than doubled in the past ten years. And new taxes and new reports of the government have added to the complexity. There have been periods in which a product has got into difficulty because of loss of favor of the public, bad management or even neglect. Attention of the Sales Vice President to the problems of some products has caused him, at times, to fail to recognize difficulties in other products even though the Product Manger of such products had recognized them and brought them to his attention. Opportunities for increasing product-lines and expanding the business are being lost because of lack of time with Vice Presidents to study them and take appropriate steps in accordance with time. In any business where specialities are sold under trademarks, brands are the major business of the company. Once the top executives group has approved the idea of a new product, it is put under one of the Vice-Presidents. He develops the organization and brings it along. With new products and the growth in the old ones, the weight, complexity and number of decisions that have to be taken by the very few men at the top, mean a heavier burden for them. The management feels that in addition to the lost opportunities, market potential and the need for development of present products are not being fully recognised. The business may have grown too big for the form of the management.