What Languages Do You Speak? Essay

Success for many organizations depends on the firm’s ability to balance product and process changes while exceeding customer expectations for improved cost delivery and quality. In lieu of these issues firms have started to implement principles of supply chain management. Supply chain management mainly involves managing the flow of incoming materials, manufacturing operations, and downstream distribution has to be in alignment that is responsive to change in customer demands eliminating a surplus of inventory.

(Taken from “Managing Operations Across the Supply Chain” 2nd Edition, by Swink, Melnyk, Cooper, Hartley, Publisher McGraw-Hill, ISBN: 13: 978-1-12-180339-8)

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).

Logistics is one of the main functions within a company, and the supply chain is a complex and sometime fragile global endeavor dependent on a network of independent, yet interconnected, moving parts. It requires professional management. Supply chain professionals order the product, build it, move it, ship it, distribute it, and drive the coordination processes with marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing, finance, and information technology. In short, they make any business effort seem effortless.

To start, Schroeder, R., Goldstein, S., and Rungtusanatham define supply chain as “the set of entities and relationships that cumulatively define materials and information flows both downstream toward the customer and upstream toward the very first supplier.” Schroeder, R., Goldstein, S., and Rungtusanatham goes on to identify supply chain management as “the design and management of seamless, value-added processes across organizational boundaries to meet the real needs of the end customer.” Organizations have to prepare themselves to the best of their ability in order to provide or their customers. Customers expect to receive the upmost service, regardless of the type of organization they make contact with.

Russell, R. S., & Taylor III, B. W. (2014). Operations and Supply Chain Management, 8th edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduced in 1982 by Booz Allen Hamilton’s consultant Keith Oliver (Jacoby, 2009), the term ‘supply chain management’ has become one of the most broadly used in modern management theory and practice. The rapid evolution of this management branch combined with a continuously

The article discussed is written by Lisa Arnseth: “Sharing Value with Suppliers,” Inside Supply Management Vol. 23, No. 4. The article begins by talking about the economic downtown was hard on everyone and when things started looking up in 2009, that some suppliers could still not recover. Suppliers were forced to make cutbacks which made it very difficult for them to stay in business. Some of the larger manufacturers decided to help their suppliers by sharing their financial expertise, capital, and their lean manufacturing knowledge to help pull them out of the rut. In today’s world, a shared value approach is beginning to take course. The article begins discussing Toyota, Hyundai Motor Company and Samsung. These companies are looked at

Supply chain management is a complex undertaking that must involve more than one organization’s efforts to succeed. A tremendous amount of skill, time, and money must be present to build and develop relationships, discover and implement a strategy, and use the capabilities of the chain to build quality at an efficient financial rate. Allowing for these requirements, it leaves one to wonder whether supply chain management is a viable option. The answer is yes, because an organization needs a strong supply chain to compete and be profitable in the marketplace. The key points for supply chain management should be to meet customer demand, produce excellent customer value, enhance responsiveness to change, build a network that can resist risk, and develop financial success.

The purpose of this report is to explain in brief to the Senior Management of a hypothetical supply chain

Supply chain management is increasing in importance because “In today’s hypercompetitive environments in which competition is among supply chain networks rather than individual firms, firms are confronted with the need to effectively manage increasingly extending supply chain activities beyond the boundary of the firm,” (Lee, B.C., et al., 2010, p. 657). As stated previously, the broader the supply chain the more risks the company is open to. The second line of protecting the supply chain is creating strong relationships with the suppliers. The longer a company has a supplier, the stronger the relationship (Bayraktar, 2010), but to get to that point there needs to be similar: corporate and national cultures, vision, technology rate change, and quality information to share (Lee, B.C., et al., 2010). When all of these characteristics align, there is trust and open communication. Since supply chain management can be considered information sharing (Lee, B.C., et al., 2010), trust and open communication are necessary for information sharing to take place. Without trust and open communication, there is a very weak supply chain and even more vulnerability to risks. Trust and open communication are extremely important in global supply chains. Extra effort from the operations manager is needed when languages and time zones complicate communication.

In the business world ,fiscal command frequently triumph over the values, the values of social responsibility and ethical behavior as corporations endeavor to relieve costs and reduce contingencies in future ,nowhere is that drive for certainty and cost reduction is more enthralling then in the corporate supply chain, the global market place demands that supply chains be fleet-footed and scatter ,an efficient supply chain is responsible for changing the organization priorities by keeping the cost of the company intact and giving company the room for growth and increase productivity ( Attaran,attaran,2007)

However managing the supply chain or value network requires increased financial and human resources and businesses need to be confident that they will receive a future return on their investment . This is particularly more relevant to the development of smaller enterprises due to their resource constraints.

The need to speak multiple languages has increased dramatically in the past decades. With communication among different cultures available now more than ever, it has become a necessity for business doers to be multilingual in various languages. Therefore, it has become unnecessary for English learners to become perfect speakers of the language, as the majority of them will be interacting with and doing business with other second language speakers. The need to be perfectly proficient in English no longer exists because the ability to be able to communicate with others, who may not have the English language mastered themselves, overrides any concern with proper language skills. It is no longer about perfection, but about effective communication.

Schoenfeldt, T. I. (2008). A practical application of supply chain management principles. Milwaukee, WI: Quality Press."