Supply Chain Opportunity For An Uncertain Economic Recovery

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.

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.

Supply chains must be managed to coordinate the inputs with the outputs in a firm to achieve the appropriate competitive priorities of the firm’s enterprise processes. The Internet offers firms an alternative to traditional methods for managing supply chains. A supply chain strategy is essential

A supply chain is very important to an organization. It can and should show the relationship between suppliers, distributors, managers and consumers. This paper would detail how important suppliers and distributions are to an organization’s success. And how important a supply chain is within an organization and how managers can utilize the supply chain. It is important that companies such as Target Corporations utilize the supply chain and gain competitive advantages. Target is one of the world’s largest retail stores; the first Target was opened in 1962 in Roseville, Minnesota (Target.com). By the end of 1962 there were only four Target and they were all operated in Minnesota.

Supply chain management has created much enthusiasm for late years for various reasons. Numerous supervisors now understand that moves made by one individual from the chain can impact the gainfulness of all others in the chain. Firms are progressively thinking as far as contending as a feature of a supply chain against other supply chains, as opposed to as a solitary firm against other individual firms.

A Customized Textbook, Supply Chain Management SCHM2301, ISBN9781308037400 Copies are on reserve in the library

Furthermore, depending on which location this company decides to produce in, we may be able to further reduce costs by paying for pieces produced. In addition, we would avoid any contact with unions reducing any additional problems like strikes, contract negotiations, and terminating poor performance workers that may affect our production time to customers. In addition, lowering labor, operating, and overhead costs though outsourcing would allow this company to potentially lower out price levels. And with our high demand, this can lead to an increase in sales and the ability to take market shares from our

These trends are; improvement of the levels of customer service over cutting costs. Supply chain costs are continuously going down since recession started four years ago. The focus of companies is the improvement of the service levels of supply chain and at the same time reducing the costs. Execution is also been seen to be moving ahead of the planning of demand and supply. Planning for demand and supply has been the ultimate focus since o=it is a crucial part of success in supply chain. Contingency planning has also resurged, supply chains are becoming leaner (Riley, 2012).Reduction in the level of inventory require organizations to be able to react quickly incase of occurrence of abnormal events such as stock outs. Companies focus on the development of contingency plans, their execution and checking if the plans are effective.

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)

Poor change communications, poor communication about the changes in outsourcing is extremely complex and burdensome. If you do it poorly and unplanned, some employees may leave before the transition. Or, if you fail to give enough notice, some employees or union workers may stay too long. In this case, you won't be able to reduce your manpower headcount in time, which means you'll end up paying your employees and your service provider for the same work.

Many supply chains evolve over time. For example, consider a memory chip supply chain. Production strategies may change during different stages of the product life cycle. When a new memory chip is introduced, price is high, yield is low, and production capacity is tight, and the availability of the product is important. Consequently, production is usually done at plants close to markets, and the management focuses on increasing yield, reducing the number of production disruptions, and fully utilizing capacity. When the product matures, however, its price drops and demand is stabilized for a period of time, so minimizing production cost moves to center stage. To reduce costs, production may be outsourced to overseas foundries, where labor and materials are much cheaper.

The firm should conduct a realistic assessment of its capabilities. It needs to determine the activity requirements that match the supply chain’s objectives and their optimal configuration in sequences when it comes to market response and cost. Furthermore, its assets will play a very important role and need to be closely evaluated. For example, if the firm uses old machinery or old technologies, that may interfere with their initial competitive strategy to provide high quality goods. Also, the same evaluation needs to be done for the extended supply chain. It is recommended that this evaluation be done by a non-biased third party. This way, the firm can have a good understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, and where they should focus in making improvements or even capital investments. This is the right time to make changes in the supply chain strategy. Once this assessment is complete, a team needs to be formed to prioritize recommendations, identify opportunities and risks, and put together the requirements for the

These are additional notes, are based on a conversation with FMP management and to be read in conjunction with the Position Description provided by FMP.

Due to its global nature and systemic impact on the firm’s financial performance, the supply chain arguably faces more risk than other areas of the company. Risk is a fact of life for any supply chain, whether it’s dealing with quality and safety challenges, supply shortages, legal issues, security problems, regulatory and environmental compliance, weather and natural disasters, or terrorism. There’s always some element of risk. Companies with global supply chains face additional risks, including, but not limited to, longer lead times, supply disruptions caused by global customs, foreign regulations and port congestion, political and/or economic instability in a source country, and changes in economics such as exchange rates. The scope and reach of the supply chain cries out for a formal, documented process to manage risk. But without a crisis to motivate action, risk planning often falls to the bottom of the priority list. Furthermore, the repercussions of supply chain disruptions to the financial health of a company can be far-reaching and devastating. A study by Hendricks and Singhal as cited by ( the Supply Chain Management Faculty at the University of Tennessee, 2014) emphasizes the negative consequences of supply chain disruptions (Production and Operations Management, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 2005). The study analyzed over 800 supply chain disruptions that took place between 1989 and 2000. Firms that experienced major supply chain disruptions saw the following

The supply chain is one of the primary ways in which an organization adds value to the consumer. Value is gained through this process in several ways. It can come from design, quality, price, or efficiency. Furthermore, supply chains can be optimized for tactical considerations such as turnover rates or economic, strategic decisions such as location or product life cycle management, or even strategic factors such as creating long term partnership or maintaining sustainable practices. Through any combination of these factors, an organization can create a competitive advantage in regards to its operating environment. Thus the supply chain can be one of the most complex aspects to running an effective organization. This analysis will provide an overview and conduct a brief literature review that will highlight some of the factors that MedCom will have to consider to create a competitive advantage in operations management.