Abrams Company manufactured a wide variety of automobile parts, such as trucks,busses, and farm equipment. It has three major groups of parts: ignition parts, transmissionparts, and engine parts. Abrams¶ parts were sold both to original equipment manufacturers(OEMS) and to wholesalers. The wholesaler then resold the parts to retailers and retailersresold to consumers. This is called the aftermarket (AM). So there are fpur product divisions.Eache of these product divisions was managed bu a vice president and general manager whowas expected to earn a target return on investment (ROI). In 1992, the four division¶s salestotaled $500 million, which included ³inside´ sales from the three product divisions to theAM divisions. The inside sales was $100 million, which was a 10% of total sales in that year.According t Abrams excecutives, the factors critical to success in the OEM marketwere: the ability to design innovative and dependaple parts that met the customer¶s quality,performance and weight specifications; meeting delivery schedule requirements so that theOEM could minimize its own parts inventories, and controlling cost. The company also haveset up a good incentive compensation plan. In general, top management was satisfied with thepresent management systems.However, top management mentioned three areas of concern. First, there alwaysseemed to be a few disputes over transfer price of parts sold by product divisions to the AMdivision. The standard corporate policy was internal sales of parts were nade at outside OEMmarket prices. But, problems occured wgen the part being transferred was strictly an AMdicision part. So there is no market price for that specified product. Occasionally the vicepresident of finance was asked to arbitrate the dispute. It is important ti take intoconsideration about this dispute because they could have a negative impact on the companyperformance. Second, top management felt that the product divisions too often tended to treatthe AM division as a captive customer. The plant often favored the OEM customer rather thatAM division. And third, top management felt that both the AM division and the threeproduct divisions carried excessive inventories most of the year