Winning afrst-tier customer contract is a major succeeds .it reveals the strengths listed in figure 3. However, profit margins for this contract are insufficient due to the fact that the product is not sufficiently diffdrentiated ,and that new markets repuire 'education'.similarly, exceeding sales targets exposes a weakness, namely that the is losing money due to an exorbitantly expensive sales infrastructure of offices worldwide.despite its technological leadership,the company has failed to sell to the leading customer in the market. Even though the customer's engineers showed aprference for the company's producth over all others for their superior design and price,the customer's international journal of production research 5687 procurement department would not place an order due to its its policy of not buying from small companies