1.1 Objectives Start by selling to one of the big four air cargo companies. After first year prove reliability and safety. Put out a new line of robot after 2 years with added features. Third Robot revision after 5 years. Secure 20% after first year with FedEx. Grow company 20% every year for the first 4 years. Secure 50% of market share after 2 Years with FedEx. Secure 100% of market share after 3 Years with FedEx. Secure 33% + 10% ~= 45% after 5 Years on open market with big four. 1.2 Mission The mission of AutoLoad is to provide a safe and efficient way to load cargo airplanes without human intervention. Our mission is to make the process of getting product from the warehouse to the transportation medium on a fully automated basis. Our goal is to increase productivity, decrease the delivery error, and decrease overhead associated to our customer’s company due to decrease in work force. 1.3 Keys to Success In order to succeed AutoLoad must: Work closely with customer to meat their growing needs. Customize the robot to the type of product that is being moved. Build relationship with current customers before obtaining new customers. Grow into new markets as the company grows. Have employees with a diverse background in many different disciplines. 1.4 Target Market AutoLoad’s initial target market will be a single air cargo transportation company such as FedEx. After four years the market will expand to all of the air cargo transportation companies. After seven to ten years the market will expand to hold any warehouse that needs to automate the process of getting product out the door and on its way to their distribution centers, clients, or customers. 1.5 Competitive Advantage The current strategy for loading an airplane with boxes starts with an automated process of determining the final location and items with similar final locations are grouped together. These groups are placed into large metal crates called “cans.” The cans are shaped like the inside of the airplane it fits into. The cans are hand loaded with packages and then hand loaded into the airplane. The current strategy is laden with error prone tasks. AutoLoad’s robot will decrease the chance of error due to a package going to the wrong location. This in turn will save money for our customers and allow them to keeptheir customers happier. Our customers also will be able to save money by not having to pay for as many package handlers’ salaries, benefits, insurance, and retirement. Any chance to increase reliability and decrease cost at the same time can never go overlooked and would be a great advantage for FedEx over its competitors. 1.6 Basic Strategies AutoLoad will get its funding from one of two places. The first strategy will be to get venture capital. Since the robots that we are building will cost anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 then we would need a large investment from a venture capital company. The second approach would be to FedEx support our project financially. In return we would design the prototype for FedEx. After the first year of having an operational prototype then we would give FedEx the option to obtain a monopoly on our robots which would allow FedEx to be the only company that loads its airplanes in a totally autonomous fashion. During the three year monopoly then we would make minor changes to the robots functions and also perform research on its reliability and other data. During the three year monopoly AutoLoad would be working on the next generation of airplane loading robot. The second generation robot will be released sometime during the third year. After the three year monopoly is up we would offer FedEx another three year monopoly but they would have to make a considerable purchase and contribution to AutoLoad in order to receive the monopoly. The third generation of our robot will be finished sometime in the last year of the second monopoly or the seventh year. After the first or second monopoly is finished then we will take our airplane loading robot to the open market. Once we are on the open market with a third generation robot and seven years worth of physical evidence of a successful product then we should be able to obtain a vast majority of the market. After ten years when we have sealed the airplane loading market then we will undergo a company renovation and get into the warehouse management market. We will create a new robot that will work with RFID technology to fully manage a warehouse. The new robot will take the product directly off the assembly line and place it in the warehouse and then load it onto the outgoing transportation vessel. The robot will be made to order for each individual customer. That means that we could build a robot for Walmart that takes product off a truck and places it in a warehouse and then places that product on another truck a few days later without human intervention. This robot could be used for any company that has a need of managing boxed inventory in a warehouse. Such customers could include L.L. Bean, Walmart, K-mart, Weber, Sony, and
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