Cardinal Health Supply Chain Performance Essay

CVS Health happens to be one of the largest pharmacies serving people in every community. In fact, there is a CVS across the street from just about every hospital, on every major interception, and are within a 2-mile radius of one another. This is the way it has been since the company was founded “in Lowell, Massachusetts by brothers Stanley and Sidney Goldstein and partner Ralph Hoagland” in 1963, and it’s the way the company plans to keep expanding the company in a proximity to one another. They have even gone as far as expanding the size of the store to fit the community. All in an effort, to be responsive and committed enough to meet the needs of not only the customers, but the clients and the community as well (CVS Health, 1999-2016). Especially, since the company admits that over the past fifty years, they have changed to better service people in their health.

Walgreen Co. (Walgreens) and its subsidiaries operate a drugstore chain in the United States. “The Company provides its customers with multichannel access to consumer goods and services, and pharmacy, health and wellness services in communities across America” (Walgreen Company). The firm currently operates two mail-order facilities and has 7,752 retail drug stores located across all 50 US states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia (Walgreens). Prescription drugs account

The purpose of this business report is to gain familiarity with Wal-Mart and to learn about the different aspects that make Wal-Mart a successful company. This report gives an in-depth analysis of the company history, services and products provided, the company philosophy, business methods, organizational structure, and financial and competitive analysis.

Retail super-giant Wal-Mart has fought its way to becoming the world's largest company. Wal-Mart’s legendary supply chain technology has allowed them to break the three-day barrier that some economists in the eighties felt that it was unbreakable. In other words, Wal-Mart is often able to replenish items on the Wal-Mart shelf in less than three days – not from the central warehouse to the shelf, but from the manufacturer to the shelf. With quick and reliable 2-day turn around, Wal-Mart is able to maintain lower levels of inventory and still meet customer demand. These lower inventory levels result in either a reduced floor plan with lower carrying costs and lower interest expense – or a greater diversity of products on the store shelves.

However, in light of its organizational problems, the situation surrounding HCCH has many opportunities.  First, increased funding looks promising; as $875 billion dollars has of late been approved with the Affordable Care Act to challenge the unacceptable status quo of health care in all of America.  Second, HCCH is in a good position to be repositioned- meaning that HCCH’s core values of service, equality, and trust are important values to its stakeholders and will only better be reinforced through an effective rebranding.  The rebranding itself is of course the third opportunity as the professional advice sought generated enlightening ideas and will guarantee a quality solution. By leveraging these opportunities and strategically managing and mitigating its problems, HCCH has the potential to create a viable marketing plan that will help keep it moving towards its organizational goals.

Porter’s five forces analysis provides a methodology to evaluate the external markets. Its consideration of substitutes, threats and power of buyer and supplier assists with the development of an integration strategy. A thorough analysis can isolate attractive opportunities in support of building a profitable business model. These strategies can leverage vertical and/or horizontal integration of new business entities. These entities are designed to help with growing market share, increase efficiencies and/or reduce costs. During the 1990’s many hospitals pursued a combination of both vertical and horizontal integration. The goal was to create an integrated delivery network (IDN) designed to improve their economic performance.

Learning directly from the people who are doing the job and creating the processes that go along with the job is the best way to gain knowledge.

By 2006 there were only three major health care distributors, Cardinal, Amerisource, and McKesson, all offering the same products and services (Pearce, 2011). But, Cardinal stood far apart from its competition because a larger percentage of their overall operating income came from non-distribution activities. Their portfolio was diversified into distributing pharmaceuticals, packaging them, providing devices to hospitals that automate dispensing of drugs through their Pyxis subsidiary and providing pharmacy services through Medicine Shoppe (Pearce, 2011).

CVS Pharmacy is the retail division of CVS Caremark. It is also one of the largest Pharmacy Retail Chains in the country and operates more than 7,400 stores domestically. Although the retail pharmaceutical division of this corporation accounts for a significant amount of this company’s success, CVS Caremark focuses more on its corporate strategy to compete with other industry rivals such as Walgreens and Rite Aid. Considering CVS Caremark is the result of the 2007 merger of CVS and Caremark Rx, this analysis will begin with a brief history and the merger of these corporations, its current performance, strategic posture, and the strategic managers of this organization.

Cardinal Health was founded in 1971 when founder Robert D. Walter opened a small distribution center in Columbus, Ohio, then named Cardinal Foods, Inc. In 1979 the food distributor branched out into pharmaceutical distribution when the company purchased a Zanesville, Ohio, drug distributor and became known as Cardinal Distribution ("Our history," 2011). The company evolved over the next several years; they went public and was renamed Cardinal Health in 1983, sold its food distribution segment in 1988, and become a global corporation with $103 billion in revenues and $1.5 billion in annual operation earnings in 2011 (Annual Report, 2011). Through several acquisitions over the past three decades

Wal-Mart is a company that has taken its core competencies, which are the capabilities the firm emphasizes and performs especially well while pursuing its vision (Ireland, Hoskisson, Hitt, 2008), and turned them into competitive advantages. Core competencies must satisfy four characteristics in order to be a competitive advantage. These advantages, according to our text, include: *valuable, *rare, *difficult to imitate,*nonsubstitutable.

One tool that can help an organization to understand its competitive positioning is the BCG Matrix. This matrix is based on the product life cycle theory and is typically used to help organizations make decisions about what products or services should be given priority over scarce resources (VBM, 2012). In analyzing Jackson's portfolio it is important to bear in mind that not all services are going to be in any one category. With a hospital this large and diversified, there will be things in which it is especially strong and things in which it is especially

W. W. Grainger, Inc. is a leading supplier of maintenance, repair, and operating (MRO) products to businesses and institutions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico with an expanding presence in Japan, India, China and Panama. The company works with more than 3,000 suppliers and runs an extensive Website (http://www.grainger.com) where Grainger offers nearly 900,000 products. The products range from industrial adhesives used in manufacturing, to hand tools, janitorial supplies, lighting equipment, and power tools. When something is needed by one of their 1.8 million customers it is often needed quickly, so quick service and product

Every company has their own supply chain in order to sort or produce goods. However, the company needs to manage supply chain to maximize its highest benefits. By having effective supply chain management, the company can ensure that the right product or service will be available at the time to the right place and at the right price (Kamal 2007). Amazon is one of the companies that have best supply chain practices in order to respond high level of responsiveness for the customers. Thereby, this paper explains about Amazon Company, analysis of Amazon’s supply chain, recommendations and barriers to implement will be discussed.

On the other hand, another control system the organization is their rewarding strategy; as they link their performance and abilities to meet goals and targets to pay raise and promotion.