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Supply Chain Management - a Basf Case Study

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Journal of Supply Chain management and other Business issues

BASF Case Study – Challenges in Supply Chain Management

Thomas Schuster, Daan Cramer, Niek Nigg, Bart van Gorp, Myrthe Jansen, Alla Lashmanova, under the supervision of Dr. Peter Bollen

University College Maastricht Business Press, Universiteit Maastricht
Zwingelput 4, 6220 MD Maastricht

Abstract. This paper primarily discusses and analyzes theories and implications of supply chain management. A case study of the German chemical company BASF is going to illustrate main concerns regarding the topic of logistics and especially outlines the challenges and problems companies face when expanding in other geographical areas. BASF failed to realize the importance of an efficient …show more content…

[5] The sixties of the last century brought a change in BASF's strategy. In this decade, production sites were progressively created or acquired abroad in order to increase market share and start an expansion abroad without investing enormous amount of financial resource as well as time. International relations were already established as early as in the beginning of the nineteenth century, however. At that time the company strongly extended its scope of manufacturing as well as marketing, and progressively created production facilities in certain geographical regions in order to focus on customer proximity. The main growth centers of this international approach were North America, Australia, and South-East Asia as the most important region. [1]

2.2 Company Structure

Every product category at BASF is governed by a separate operating division such as Engineering plastics, industrial chemicals, coatings & colorants, etc. Additional support is ascertained with functional division. These divisions handle accounting, finance, planning & controlling tasks, human resources, and many other supplementary tasks. Later parts of this paper are especially going to focus on the logistical challenges, which were mostly apparent in the South Eastern Asian regions. Further, the expansions in various geographical regions lead to the creation of regional departments or regional divisions. In total, there are 14 subdivisions that handle individual group companies. The individual group

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