Supplychain

Supply chain strategy can be categorized into two characters, which are responsiveness or efficiency. Balancing both characters is an important concern in supply chain design and management.

A supply chain is a net work of firms. Thus, each firm in the chain should build its own supply chains to support the competitive priorities of its services or products. Two distinct designs used to competitive advantage are efficient supply chains and responsive supply chains. Efficient supply chains work best in environments where demand is highly predictable. The focus of the supply chain is on efficient flows of services and materials keeping inventories to a minimum. The firm’s competitive priorities are low-cost operations, consistent quality, and on-time delivery. Responsive supply chains designed to react quickly in order to hedge against uncertainties in demand. Work best when firms offer a great variety of services or products and demand predictability is low. Typical competitive priorities are development speed, fast delivery times, customization, variety, volume flexibility, and top quality. Tables below show the environments and design features that best suit each design.

The lean and agile paradigms, while particularly different, can be and have been joint within effectively designed and operated total supply chains. In the Wings and Legs case, cost is an important market winner and this is reduced by leanness. In the case of agility the key point is that Wings and Legs operate in an extremely volatile marketplace. Therefore the solution is to develop a hybrid supply chain.

Amazon.com, Peapod, Dell, and many furniture manufacturers use push-pull supply chain strategies. Describe how each of these companies takes advantage of the risk-pooling concept.

From 1990s, due to the economic globalization and the increased competitive pressures, lots of firms increase their focus on integrated supply chain management to gain a competitive advantage. Effective supply chain can facilitate a firm to be more competitive not only by reducing the purchasing costs but also improving the competitive dimensions of quality, dependability, flexibility, and innovation.

Finances are one of the most crucial parts of any business. Every business has to be aware of what type of resources, especially financial resources, it has available to work with. The financial aspect of a business determines almost every other aspect of that business. Being able to utilize budgets, in order to reduce costs and make profit, is imperative.

The impact of globalization is increasing every day and companies are becoming more associated both in and out with other organizations. The turnaround time in any business for any event should be as minimum as possible. Enterprise systems add value to the organization by increasing both the operational efficiency and the throughput of the company. Today, supply chain management (SCM) is eventually becoming a core competency wherein the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is supposedly an integral part of supply chain management (SCM).

With every industry facing greater turbulence and uncertainty there is a corresponding urgent need for concepts, frameworks, models and methodologies that provide enterprises with greater intelligence and agility in responding to threats and opportunities. The unique or special series of issues that complicate the change process are detailed in this analysis. Of the many industries faced with the need to be vigilant to change processes and seek out their contributions continually is the global auto manufacturing industry. Toyota has been able to capitalize on the most valuable aspects of internal change management in the concepts and methodologies of their Toyota Production System (TPS) (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Many of the best practices Toyota has created for onboarding new suppliers reflect the foundational elements of the Parallel Incremental Transformation Strategy (PITS) methodology (Taylor, 1999). Foremost among these is the need to provide a high level of agility in organizational change management strategies and frameworks to ensure core areas of a company stay responsive and focused on supply chain dynamics (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). The special issues that complicate the change process relating to supply chain performance are abundant in the auto industry, as this analysis illustrates.

The vision of Agility is to assist in humanitarian projects, especially in terms of operational readiness and response to emergencies through the use of its strength as a company and its expertise in contingency logistics operations. The goal of Agility is to become one of the top-eight leading logistics providers and the revenue target to be reached by the year 2008 is US$8 billion through continuous investment and development in its existing infrastructure and capabilities.

There are a multitude of problems in the IS strategy at Stratex. The most severe and strategically important one is how disconnected the IS strategy is from the business strategy at the corporate level, exacerbated by the decentralized IS system architecture. At this point even if Stratex deliberately wanted to create a unified corporate strategy its systems would not allow for it. The primary benefits of a decentralized IS strategy is the ability to deliver highly specific, tailored information to the unique business requirements of a given division or sector of the business (Gray, 1986). The logic that follows that decentralized IS strategies allow companies to concentrate with greater clarity and insight into a given series of markets; over relying on a centralized IS system to accomplish this (Hur, Riyanto, 2012). Further galvanizing this decentralized structure into place is the very strong resistance to change as seen by the negative comments of line-of-business managers from each of the four divisions regarding the Network Project. Decentralized IS strategies are often the most difficult to modify or augment as resistance to change is so significant throughout enterprises who have for years found this strategy of IS deployment the most effective in managing competitive strategies at the divisional level (de Sousa, Pellissier, Monteiro, 2012).

“The finest supply chains aren’t just swift and cost effective, they are also agile and flexible and they ensure that all their companies interests stay aligned.”- Hall L Lee

The length of the supply chains for several US companies is being increased by the current global competition and outsourcing. This makes it vital for these industries to utilize a systems approach to consider the big picture in their decision-making. Applying a systems approach is important in enhancing supply chain agility. This is because integrating the systems approach in supply provides a unit set of common and reliable data across an organization’s chain of production and supply. This approach will also allow for a secure multitier visibility to enhance

The strategic management of the supply chain does not consist of introducing innovations in order just to innovate. It is about creating a configuration that will make the strategic objectives progress. According to Slack et al. (2004, p.67) an « operations strategy concerns the pattern of strategic choices and actions that set the purpose, objectives and activities of operations ». According to Hayes (2005), efficient operations strategies need to be consistent and contribute to competitive advantage. The process of operations strategy covers the activities and dynamics of strategy elaboration and implementation (Swink and Way, 1995), whereas the content of operations strategy consists of the particular decisions regarding competitive priorities, objectives, and action plans that specify the operation 's strategic direction.Several authors gave their definition of operations strategy; four interrelated perspectives then emerged. The top-down approach is « what the business wants operations to do » and the bottom-up perspective represent « what day-to-day experience should do ». Top-down strategy can be distinguished from a bottom-up strategy in terms of two aspects: the initiative 's origin and the sequence of events amongst purposes, actions, and results. Top-down strategy is triggered by top management 's aims and manifests in the performance outcomes of stipulated actions. Bottom-up strategy is initiated by lower managers’ actions realizing their own interpretations

I think the argument is very clear and very strong. The authors provides a compelling argument as to why there is a need for RSC (Responsive supply chain) by highlighting objectives of AM (Agility Manufacturing) and SCM (Supply chain management) and that the better part of each of these two combined can improve the performance of the organization so that it is better equipped to handle the challenges of the market. The

Organizations’ have matured over the years; they have learned and adapted to become more strategic in every aspect of their business. One way organizations’ have done this is by understanding the importance of operations and supply chain management. The author will explain how operations and supply chain management evolved to what it is today, how this is important to the company’s strategy, and define the dimensions of the quality.