Answered Questions

Hello!

We recommend you start with the MarketLine Advantage database. You'll find this and a number of other relevant resources in the Business LibGuides, at http://libguides.brenau.edu/cat.php?cid=6186 . MarketLine is accessible through several guides, but we'll use the Business Administration research guide. Click to http://libguides.brenau.edu/business , then click on the gold Articles tab. MarketLine Advantage is the first database in the center column. Click on the title, and enter your Brenau username and password. Once there, search Komatsu. There are about 200 results on the company, listed by Industries, Companies, Company News, and Financial Deals. Clicking on Industries will give you an overview of all of the industries Komatsu is involved in, including industry level financial information. Clicking on Companies will allow you to examine the individual Komatsu companies and discover large amount of information about the company, including competitors. Additional information can be gained by searching the competitors in the database,

For financial information , the investing section of Yahoo Finance, http://finance.yahoo.com/marketupdate , is a good resource for this assignment, as you've already discovered. You will also find http://biz.yahoo.com/p/industries.html to be useful.

It includes the following industry-level ratios and stats for many industry sectors:

For additional information, see also

http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=GPS

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/gps/profile

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/gps/financials?query=ratios

Finding information on an idea like best practices can be difficult. You may be more successful if you instead focus on strategies that resulted in success and failure in similar circumstances and think critically to identify best practices yourself. In addition to the industry and company information from MarketLine and the other sources listed above gather commentary and facts from ABI/Inform, listed immediately below MarketLine. Searching "construction equipment" AND manufacturing will return many articles. Add another AND and a specific term you want to know more about. Use the right toolbar to limit to the last 5 years, source types trade and scholarly, and any subjects you find useful.  This should lead you to the information you need to determine what the best practices for the situation and problem at hand. If you have problems locating articles on a specific aspect, post again and we'll hunt some more.