MINIT-LUBE
1. What constitutes the mission of Minit-Lube?
To provide economical preventative maintenance and in-terior auto cleaning, primarily to
vehicles owned by indi-viduals (as opposed to businesses), in the U.S.
2. How does the Minit-Lube strategy provide competitive
advantage?
This case is a good way to get the student thinking about the 10 decisions around which
the text is organized. Minit-Lube’s ap-
proach to these 10 decisions includes:
n Product design: A narrow product strategy could be defined as “lubricating automobiles”
(more in Chapter 5).
n Quality strategy: Because of limited task variety, high repetition, good training, and good
manuals, quality should be relatively easy to maintain.
n Process strategy: The process strategy allows employees and capital investment to focus
on doing this mission well, rather than trying to be a “general purpose” garage or gas
station.
n Location strategy: Facilities are usually located near resi-
dential areas.
n Layout strategy: The three bays are designed specifically for the lubrication and
vacuuming tasks to minimize wasted movement on the part of the employees and to
contribute to the speedier service.
n Supply chain strategy: Purchasing is facilitated by negotiation of large purchases and
custom packaging.
n Human resources strategy: Human resources strategy focuses on hiring a few employees
with limited skills and training them in a limited number of tasks during the performance
of which they can be closely supervised.
n Inventory: Inventory investment should be relatively low, and they should expect a high