Decision Phase of Supplychain

The main elements of a supply chain include purchasing, operations, distribution, and integration. The supply chain begins with purchasing. Purchasing managers or buyers are typically responsible for determining which products their company will sell, sourcing product suppliers and vendors, and procuring products from vendors at prices and terms that meets profitability goals.

3. How can supply chain design and integration help John Wolf reduce investment and space requirements while maintaining adequate service levels?

Research suggests that customers go through a five-stage decision-making process when making any purchase. This is summarised in the diagram below:

The Customer relationship, Order fulfillment, and Supplier relationship processes need to be analyzed from the perspective of process structure, process improvement, layout, and capacity.

The average lead time of a corporation is 15 weeks from production to consumption. Benchmark firms have a lead time of 8 weeks which is the goal for the supply chain (Heizer & Render 2010). The 8 week number will be achieved by analyzing opportunities to streamline the process thereby creating efficiencies and driving down the amount of time it takes to produce and ship products. Setting a goal for an 8 week lead time will give the firm an opportunity to assess their forecasting and production capabilities presenting a way to identify and address inefficiencies.

During the game, I realized that wide gaps in orders of every role in the supply chain such as factory, distributor and retailer create inventory management challenges. For example, distributor records 0units between week1-week 4 compared to retailer within the same period. The retailer records 3units, 5units, 2units and 2units between weeks 1- week 4. The same applies to factory with 0units from weeks 2-4. Addressing inventory management problems requires developing an average unit level to avoid disappointing customers when demand

It identifies diverse procedures that lead to client contentment. It is used to depict development opportunities and is based on process modeling, performance measures, and best practice sharing. It helps the companies measure the flow of information and physical goods and consists of three levels, the scope and content of the supply chain ( level 1), the supply chain strategy is configured ( level 2) and aligning available and forecasted resources to meet expected demand (level 3).

How can Harley Davidson marketing and sales, personnel interact with its purchasing personnel to further strengthen the supply chain and improve customer loyalty?

4.Given the 4 areas of the company, choose some supply chain processes and suggest appropriate performance metrics.

The Spanish retail chain Zara has unique supply chain management practices that enable it to gain a competitive advantage over other fashion retailers in the industry. Zara’s rapid response time enables the firm to quickly respond to changing fashions while deliberately under producing products. This strategy, which is supported by competencies in logistic management, design and information systems, allows the company to maintain less inventory and higher profit margins and is a key factor to Zara’s success. The firm should continue to add value by seeking new opportunities to expand in the retail market and maintain their sustainable growth.

Supply chains represent the procurement, production and distribution activities of an organisation. Within a supply chain, these activities are viewed as linked and reliant on one another to produce the final outcome. It is believed that if one component of the chain fails, the whole chain is broken and product/service delivery goals will not be achieved.

efficient supply chain. There are two main factors that go towards deciding the actual point of

The class text states that Supply chain management is frequently divided into supply chain planning applications, supply chain execution applications, logistics management, and warehouse management. Often when companies fail at implementing an efficient supply chain because of the planning section, or inaccurate demand forecasts. The text states electronic data interchange is one of the earliest uses of information technology for supply chain management, Electronic data interchange is the use of the Internet for everyday business transactions. “In this era of information a firm’s supply chain should operate at speed of thought and this is possible only by enhanced e-speed communications and information sharing with their critical partners.” (4)

Inventory control – how much invetory should we keep on hand, how should we store and distrubute it

1We would like to thank Shiming Deng for his valuable contributions to the preparation of this manual.