Essay on Eastern Waves, Inc.

Taken from, Waddell, Jones, and George (2013) 3rd Edition.  Contemporary  Management, Sydney, McGraw Hill (pages

Supply Chain Opportunity in an Uncertain Economic Recovery, by Eric G. Olson, discusses the advantages the supply chain has in a struggling economic recovery, when most other companies are dealing with uncertainty. The authors’ intention contained in this article is to discuss opportunities that businesses have to grow their operations despite coming out of a severe recession. The author identifies to take advantage of these opportunity, companies must be willing to be more flexible and that scalability is much easier to implement coming out of a severe recession. The author provides a design, methodology, and approach to implement these changes, highlighting the scalability and flexibility benefits, mitigation if multiple risks, identification supply chain opportunities.

Effective retailing technology allows companies to manage inventory by efficiently storing, shipping, and stocking items that its customers want. Inventory management is the key to a company’s success or failure, and Kmart seems to be the poster child of poor supply chain management. Since as far back as Joseph Antonini’s leadership, Kmart has had logistics issues (Young, 2002). Another recent CEO, Chuck Conaway, went so far as to admit that supply chain management was “the Achilles Heel” of Kmart (Carr & Cone, 2001). This paper will examine how investing in redundancy, having an increase velocity in sensing and responding, and by building an adaptive supply chain community could have reduced the risk that is damaging to a supply chain.

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.

Reduction of supply chain costs a priority for CEOs Product recalls in the region of 15-20 per week¹ Market penetration, globalization, and geographical expansions have witnessed growth

Flood of the century or not, tech companies are taking steps to limit their exposure to the next traumatic event. Some are revising their inventory models; others are implementing supply chain software and setting up Web supplier hubs. Everyone wants tighter collaboration with suppliers and timelier information from customers. Tech companies are trying, in short, to make their supply chains shorter, transparent, and as flexible as possible. Rethinking of supply chain management at large networking, telecom equipment, PC and chipmakers is the remedy in this unstable

Mr. Ross, a history teacher, turns his WW2 class of high school students into a communist like party. The Wave, written by Morton Rhue, is a novel about how a class experiment went wrong. Mr Ross decided that it would be a great idea to get his students to take part in an experiment with the sole purpose of teaching them how the world of the Nazi Germany operated and what it was. Laurie Saunders, however, did not go along with it for very long as she felt as though something bad was to come out of it.

This assignment had to be written for the class of Management and Organizations at Stenden University, course IBMS, first year. We had a group of 6 and had to work it out together. We were enjoying getting into the world of IKEA, the world’s most furniture store on the market.

DIMCO may gain many advantages by implementing supply management chain. Implementing SCM can reduce problems within the company’s internal functions, external suppliers, and external distributors. Some advantages DIMCO can gain from implementing SCM are as follows; the supply chain would improve the quality of service to the end user; reduce channel cost; and create a competitive advantage. (Reid & Sanders, 2010) The implementations of SCM will strengthen DIMCO partnership with suppliers and distributors. Supply chain management can also prevent such challenges such as the bullwhip effect, caused by erratic replenishment of orders placed on different levels in the supply chain that have no apparent link to final product demand. (Reid & Sanders, 2010) An effective and efficient SCM will allow partners to share information concerning health, safety, government regulations and environmental issues. SCM will provide a common network for communications, suggestions, and feedback. This will assist DIMCO in meeting the need of customers quickly and in an efficient manner. Overall, SCM would assist in

The global supply chain in the retail industry has witnessed changes and shifts which have led to opportunities and challenges for the involved players. This has occasioned shifts in trade and consumer behavior patterns. Among these are global growth patterns brought about by explosion of more cities and thus growth in infrastructure. There have been flexible supply chain trends which have enabled retail operators to adapt effectively to unexpected circumstances and changes. Moreover, globalization has changed the way retail supply chain is managed as more mature markets emerge to provide logistic and standard solution needs of the businesses. Conversely, near-shoring has

Changes within the supply chain can disrupt the normal flow of goods and services because each change hasn’t been fully scrutinized. A firm can plan and speculate that a change with have a certain effect on the supply chain, but until those processes have been measured it is impossible to know the true cause and effect of any disruption.

The way an organization views purchasing will determine the criteria it uses to measure its performance. Using the Van Weele

Today’s global supply chain has been shaped by the past decades of focus and strategies based on achieving the lowest operational costs coupled with a push towards market expansion and supplier outsourcing. The expansion of global supply chains combined with the increasing number of joined connections to external business partners has significantly raised the possibility for supply chain disruptions (Poirier, Quinn, & Swink, 2010). In today’s global business environment, the importance of risk management continues to grow daily.

However, MacDowell Corporation believes that changing the relationship with San Fabian Supply Company will make it benefit more. On one hand, MacDowell has been marketing its products through an exclusive distributor only in the Philippines and the parent company wants to market the products same as in other countries. On the other hand, the demand for construction materials has decreased since the expansion of its plant in the Philippines before. MacDowell Philippines’ plant operating rate was very low, at only about 45% capacity, and the overcapacity plagued the company a lot. To get rid of this situation, MacDowell Philippines wants to increase sales and its new president believes that having more dealers can lead to more sales. So MacDowell wants to change the relationship with San Fabian Company in the

Demand management performance, referring to the extent to which a firm is capable to fulfill its customer’s orders efficiently and effectively, has become one important indicator of a firm’s overall performance (Cachon and Fisher 2000; Heikkila 2002; Xu et al.2003). The demand management process is concerned with balancing the customer’s requirements with the capabilities of the supply chain. This includes forecasting demand and synchronizing it with production, procurement, and distribution capabilities (Croxton et al. 2002). A good demand management process can enable a company to be more proactive to unanticipated demand and more reactive to unanticipated demand. Supply chain risk, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties have become topical issues of interest among academics and practitioners in the last few years (Oke and Gopalakrishnan 2009). Supply chains are vulnerable to risks or disruption that arise from problems in coordinating supply and demand, including both high-likelihood, low-impact and high-impact, low-likelihood risks, both of which affect organizations in a major way (Chopra and Sodhi 2004; Kleindorfer and Saad 2005). Thus, for firms, having the ability to respond effectively to the demand disruption is crucial. Although there is growing interest in exploring ways to manage these disruptions (e.g., Chopra and Sodhi 2014; Yu et al. 2009), little prior research examines the types of organizational capabilities that help a firm manage demand disruptions. Our