...Supply Chain Coordination and Bullwhip Effect Name University Instructor Institution Date Supply chain coordination and bullwhip effect Introduction The development of effective coordination in organizations is essential for the maximization of the process of turning competitive advantage into profitability. Such coordination must occur both within the organization production and sales departments and beyond to include organizations contracted to handle its products. The process of coordination seeks to ensure that customer satisfaction is achieved through the adoption of approaches that are in tandem with their point of view. Organizations also adopt supply chain coordination to enable them align their plans with the objectives of individual enterprises that that handles their products. As such, the process emphasizes on the management of inventories and the ordering process within the organization and also within other organizations that do business with the company (Gupta & Mishra, 2012). Bullwhip effect is a trend that results into significant swings in the inventory responses in relations to alterations customer’s demands. The instability witnessed with the customer’s demand leads to the need for organizations make forecasts for demands in order to enable them position their inventory and other resources in line with the customer demand. As a product moves up the supply change, the participants within the chain observe variations in demand and this...
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...Inventory Management is a necessary Evil General Area: Supply Chain Management (SCM) Problem Area: Inventory Management a necessary Evil Ravi Kumar PGP/17/108 Email: ravik17@iimk.ac.in Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode Abstract This article tries to explore how inventory management is one of the integral part of various business units in today’s business world. There are many modeling techniques available in Inventory management evolving very rapidly over a period of time, which can be used for performing different functions of meeting the customer satisfaction and helping the firms to achieve highly efficient SCM and in turn increase their profit margin. Not just that Inventory management systems have capability of meeting the uncertainty of demand by providing planned and effective way countering these uncertainties. This articles also discuss the critical point of inventory being a necessary evil i.e. with inventory firms have to bear certain cost but without it they can’t beat the demand uncertainties. The current models available however have discussed various issues related with the inventory management in real world but models are evolving to get rid of obsolescence and be competitive. There is lot of potential locked up in these models which can change the way managements make decisions in today’s world. Thus there is scope for applying systems thinking methodology this area and bring out synergies in different applications of Inventory management...
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...A STRATEGIC ANALYSIS OF A FACILITY SUPPLY DISTRIBUTOR IN BRITISH COLUMBIA by Derek Brooks B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1993 PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION In the Executive Masters of Business Program of the Faculty of Business Administration ©Derek Brooks, 2014 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2014 All rights reserved. However in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work, may be reproduced, without authorization, under the conditions for Fair Dealing. Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, Particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL Name: Degree: Title of Project: Derek Brooks Master of Business Administration A Strategic Analysis of a Facility Supply Distributor in British Columbia Supervisory Committee: _____________________________________ Dr. Aidan Vining Senior Supervisor CNABS Professor of Business and Government Relations & Area Coordinator, Strategy. _______________________________________ Dr. Andrew von Nordenflycht Second Reader Associate Professor Date Approved: _______________________________________ i ABSTRACT This paper presents a business level strategic analysis of RST Corporation’s facility supply division, in British Columbia Canada. The facility supply industry is in decline. Firms find it increasingly...
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...Mahmudul Haque Title: A Conceptual Study on the Relationship between Service Quality towards Customer Satisfaction: Servqual and Gronroosʼs Service Quality Model Perspective Journal: Asian Social Science, Vol. 8, No. 13, 2012 The article explores the effect of service quality on customer satisfation, by the use of service quality models, SERVQUAL and Gronroos. The outcome of this study is not reflected in the abstract, but it does state that suggestions for managers on implementing these concepts, are given. Both SERVQUAL and Gronroos are previously described phenomenons in service quality theory. The article seeks to compare the two models, and as a result the article takes form as a descriptive and exploratory approach. As mentioned before, the article explores service quality models, SERVQUAL and Groonroos and the article limits itself to these two service quality models and their individually limited appllication areas. The article argues that customer satisfaction is influenced by a variety of quality subjects, these include functionalty, technical, company image and service quality, and it seeks to find the effect from the aforementioned service quality models. Author: J. Will M. Bertrand and Jan C. Fresco Title: Modelling and Simulation, Operations management research methodoligies using quantitative modeling Journal: International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2002, pp. 241-264 The research question in this article can be as such:...
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...Supply chain management (SCM) is a broadened management focus that considers the combined impact of all the companies involved in the production of goods and services, from suppliers to manufacturers to wholesalers to retailers to final consumers and beyond to disposal and recycling. This approach to managing production and logistics networks assumes all companies involved in the process of delivering goods to consumers are part of a network, pipeline, or supply chain. It encompasses everything required to satisfy customers and includes determining which products they will buy, how to produce them, and how to deliver them. The supply chain philosophy ensures that customers receive the right products at the right time at an acceptable price and at the desired location. Increasing competition, complexity, and geographical scope in the business world have led to this broadened scope and continuing improvements in the capabilities of the personal computer have made the optimization of supply chain performance possible. Electronic mail and the Internet have revolutionized communication and data exchange, facilitating the necessary flow of information between the companies in the supply chain. Companies that practice supply chain management report significant cost and cycle time reductions. For example, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced increases in inventory turns, decreases in out-of-stock occurrences, and a replenishment cycle that has moved from weeks to days to hours. A fundamental...
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...Inventory Management Name Professor Operations Management March 4, 2014 Abstract In this paper I will present the different characteristics of inventory management and how it relates to two supply chains I have selected. My goal is to show how inventory has an effect on operations, customer satisfaction, and the efficiency of these companies daily business. The research I have done will speak a little about the transition from the old time consuming tracking to today’s electronic system. I will also provide my ideas of how to improve inventory manager in the future. Service is one of the largest parts of development in business. Being able to provide quality service depends in part on inventory and the management of it. These two very important business elements always lead back to the customer. And this is how I chose the companies I wanted to compare and contrast for this essay. The two service companies I chose are Walmart and Target. As most people know Walmart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton. When Sam began his business his main focus was small town and low prices. He planned a sneak attack and was able to establish himself as one of the top competitors with big names like Target and Kmart. Target is a division of the Dayton Hudson Corporation and was also started in 1962. With the same goal in mind Target stores were opened to offer the customers quality goods with low prices. These two companies were both started with a similar practice for success but they...
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...A. A supply chain strategy appears in many different forms and varieties; picking the right strategy is the hard part. When deciding on a strategy, the goal is to pick the correct one that will benefit your specific organization and area. There are six different strategy associated with supply chain management: Many supplier, few suppliers, vertical integration, a combination of the two referred to as a joint venture, Keiretsu, and a virtual company (Hiezer). The first couple of the strategies have a company rely heavily on external suppliers for their goods and service. Not necessarily working in conjunction with the organization business strategy, but aggressively compete with other suppliers to gain essentially the right to provide the product on the companies demand. The goal of both these strategies isn’t to foster a long term partnering relationship with the buyer’s organization. The strategy of vertical integration takes on two forms also; a company can either purchase a supplier or work in combination and join resources becoming a joint venture. Vertical integration can be forward taking on more of the distribution action or backwards by produce what was in the past purchased. They can benefit from organization talents by reducing cost, increase quality, and timely deliveries. It being hard to everything well and the large financial commitment are some of the challenges of a vertical integration strategy, for some organization these challenges may force them into...
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...Aquilano, 2006). For Riordan to implement this type of plan, an entire new strategy will need to be developed for handling inventory. Currently, each Riordan plant handles inventory independently. Now Riordan must centralize inventory and ordering systems. The two systems need to be centralized because lean production is based on the theory that goods are produced when needed, thus eliminating waste (Chase, Jacobs, & Aquiliano, 2006). Current Situation In China, the suppliers’ on-time delivery rate is only 93%. This is an unacceptable rate in a lean production planning environment. To increase this percentage, the plant will need to have deliveries more frequent so materials are always on hand. This would eliminate a potential bottleneck by having inventory on hand to mitigate a negative effect on production times. Another change to implement is in the receiving of raw materials and the shipping of their finished goods Process Improvement Part of the just in time theory of lean production is it reaches the customer “in time”. This can be accomplished by proceeding with the Shanghai move. This would reduce the steps needed to distribute products to customers. In addition to a decreased throughput time for finished goods to reach the customer, Riordan could save money, thus eliminating wasteful spending. Benefits By centralizing inventory and customer orders, increasing on-time deliveries from suppliers, and eliminating the shipping bottleneck, the Hangzhou plant can...
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...Supply chain management (SCM) is a broadened management focus that considers the combined impact of all the companies involved in the production of goods and services, from suppliers to manufacturers to wholesalers to retailers to final consumers and beyond to disposal and recycling. This approach to managing production and logistics networks assumes all companies involved in the process of delivering goods to consumers are part of a network, pipeline, or supply chain. It encompasses everything required to satisfy customers and includes determining which products they will buy, how to produce them, and how to deliver them. The supply chain philosophy ensures that customers receive the right products at the right time at an acceptable price and at the desired location. Increasing competition, complexity, and geographical scope in the business world have led to this broadened scope and continuing improvements in the capabilities of the personal computer have made the optimization of supply chain performance possible. Electronic mail and the Internet have revolutionized communication and data exchange, facilitating the necessary flow of information between the companies in the supply chain. Companies that practice supply chain management report significant cost and cycle time reductions. For example, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced increases in inventory turns, decreases in out-of-stock occurrences, and a replenishment cycle that has moved from weeks to days to hours. A fundamental...
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...Memo To: Management Committee From: Student, Vice President Controller Date: June 6, 2012 Subject: Maintain Current Business Process vs. Modify Internal Business Process Dear Professor, As per your request, attached is the report that we have prepared, outlining the course of action Clearwater Small Appliances management team should adopt in designing and planning for the operation, given the opportunities and constraints faced at present. This report gives a complete analysis of the situation and different alternatives available, followed by a final recommendation using our criteria. Please let us know should you have any questions or require further clarifications on this report. Yours truly, Student, Vice President Controller of Clearwater Small Appliances Introduction and Problem Statement Clearwater is a small appliance manufacturer that has been in existence for approximately 50 years. The company produces a large spectrum of small household appliances such as coffee makers, toaster ovens, microwaves and irons. Recent changes to the retailing industry by “power retailers” have required Clearwater to alter its way of doing business. The board of directors have developed a new strategy to become a profitable supplier to “power retailers” but do not have the means to monitor and evaluate the success or failure of the strategy. Issues 1. Clearwater is suffering from declining sales. Category retailers have become powerful...
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...Supply Chain Management – Assignment 1 Cenk Oran - 111112125 Innov8 Smarter Supply Chain Setting the model: The primary need to re-design the model is high cost of new vendors and long time the process. To prevent long time cycle and paper work, I changed “VENDOR ON-BOARD MANUAL” option to “AUTOMATIC” and added “DEMAND FORECASTING” to act faster when new order needed, also this enabled me to save cost by shortening the lead time. I used “DATA MINING” to get contact with the right vendor at the right time, it also eliminated lots of paper work and working hour. The second need was a nerve center to consolidate sales and fulfilment data and automating / updating of replanishment plans. So I added “RETAIL REPLANISHMENT PLAN UPDATED” and kept “VENDOR ORDER RECEIVED” option. The last requirement was the information on replenishment for DC to store activity in order to track products and stores that need inventory triggered replanishment plan. In order to enable these firslty I added “NERVE CENTER UPDATED WITH SALES DATA” to indicate inventory data for stores and “NERVE CENTER UPDATED WITH FULFILMENT DATA”. Hurricane scenario: I had to move 2187 units and I had to make a decision between 2 warehouses and 2 local vendors. Costs, invetories, qualities, impacts of environment and on-time rates were variable. I compared their costs basis 1500 units and w/ extra truck charges included and: For Local...
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...Critical Factors The major players in this case are George, Paul, and the company management. The case reveals three critical issues, two of them are organizational issues and the third one is related to human character and integrity. The critical issues are as follows: a) the company had lack of quality control system, b) the company had lack of inventory control and management system, and c) Paul showed unethical behavior and influenced George to follow the same. Detailed analyses of each of the critical issues are discussed below with appropriate references. Quality Control The company did not seem to have an effective quality control system in place. The night shift employees were asked to complete the job without putting any emphasis on the quality of the product. The management was happy as long as the assigned job was completed within the period of night shift. The company provided no training to the employees (as evidenced by the instant hiring and putting George at work immediately with no training) on how to establish, monitor, and assure the quality of the product that they produced. The night-shift employees had no idea about the harmful effects of the polluted product on the consumers and the possible consequences the company would have to face for it. Not to mention that if the consumers get sick due to their poor milk product, the company could be sued and might even go bankrupt. The night shift employees could not see the big picture and were...
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...How to Analyze the Effects of Channel Management by Ian Linton, Demand Media Definition of 'Distribution Management' Overseeing the movement of goods from supplier or manufacturer to point of sale. Distribution management is an overarching term that refers to numerous activities and processes such as packaging, inventory, warehousing, supply chain and logistics. Effective distribution channel management can improve sales and customer satisfaction. Related Articles * Channel Management Techniques * What Is a Marketing Channel or Channel of Distribution? * How to Write a Marketing Distribution Channel Strategy * Distribution Channel Selection Factors * How to Analyze the Code of Ethics of an Organization * How to Build a Text Distribution List on Your iPhone Channel management is a technique for selecting the most efficient channels or routes to market for your products and services, and deriving the best results from those channels by applying appropriate financial, marketing or training resources. Channels to market include such distribution methods as direct sales from a website, sales force or call center and indirect sales through distributors or retailers. You analyze the effects of channel management by measuring factors such as changes in your share of the market or the volume of sales via certain channels, the changing costs of going to market through certain channels, and varying levels of customer satisfaction achieved by certain channels...
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...Operations management can be described as the practice of managing the operating core of a company: the activities related to creation, production, distribution, as well as delivery of the products or service of the company. It focus on controlling and managing the process to manufacture and distribute goods or services, and concern about the responsibility of ensuring operations in business process are effective in the terms of meeting customers’ satisfaction, as well as efficient in terms of consuming as little resources as necessary. The definition of operations management (OM) is the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs to outputs (Jay Heizer & Barry Render, 2008). It is the function of managing the operating core of an organization: the activities associated with creation, production, distribution, and delivery of the organizations’ goods and service (Kashi Naresh Singh & Rajiy Kumar Srivastava, 2007). In this report, I would like to focus on three strategic decision areas of operations management: Quality, Supply chain management, as well as Inventory. 2 Problem Statement Tesco is one of the most successful retailer companies in the world, and Tesco’s operations strategy has contributed greatly to Tesco’s business processes. It is widely acknowledged Tesco’s operation management is effective and efficient in facilitating Tesco’s business strategy, however, how exactly Tesco’s operations management and strategy...
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...2 1.1 Literature Review on Customer Experience (CE) & Customer Loyalty (CL) 2 1.2 Creating a favourable CE & Strong CL based on Conceptual Framework 2 1.3 Linkage between Customer Experience Vs Customer Loyalty 4 1.4 Conclusion 5 Task 2. Application of Key concepts and Framework 5 2.1 Cooperate Profile / background 6 2.2 Review of existing CE & CL 6 2.3 Recommendation for Improvement for Weakness 7 2.4 Recommendation for sustaining the Customer Loyalty 8 2.5 Conclusion 9 References 10 Task 1. Critical Evaluation of Key Concepts and Theories 1.1 Literature Review on Customer Experience (CE) & Customer Loyalty (CL) Given the competitive landscape today, organization are leveraging their differentiation and competitive advantages not only the innovative products and low prices, better quality but also customer experiences (CE). This experience factor has been defined in numbers of ways. Customer experience is originated from a set of interactions between a customer and a product, a company or a part of its organization which provokes a reaction (La Salle and Brittion, 2003; Shaw and Ivens, 2005). Meyer and Schwager 2007 see it as internal and subjective response that customers have to contact directly or indirectly with the company. Greval et al (2009) also discussed that it include every point of contact at which the customers interacts with the business, product or service. Providing a positive customer experience can promote the...
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