Global supply network management is a complex business function that requires the focus company to manage multiple supply chain partners around the world. It is easy to identify that global supply chains may have more opportunities to meet specific challenges and risks comparing with domestic supply chains, such as culture shocks with suppliers and longer delivery time (Mollenkopf, 2010). Thus, the aim of this report is to analyse some global supply network risks by using Apple Inc. as a case study. In the first part of this report, Apple’s supply network will be break down into several parts and a potential risk analysis will be allocated for each part. Then, the degree of circularity and some suggestions for Apple to improve its supply network …show more content…
The PEST analysis is a good model for analysing environmental changes (Gupta, 2013) which can be considered at this level (see appendix). In summary, it is clear to see that some risks still exist in Apple and its supply network through the above analysis, although Apple is a world leading company and has a creative global supply network structure. Thus, it is necessary for Apple to forecast and manage these risks continuously. 4. Circularity …show more content…
Apple aims to try its best to save the materials, such as aluminium and steel. Thus, Apple has insisted to develop its products as thinner as possible because thinner products may not cost too many materials (Apple, 2015a). In addition, Apple encourages customers to return their Apple products to the Apple stores for recycling, if they do not want these products anymore. If the products still have monetary value, Apple will offer a certain number of credits that the customers can use for their next Apple product (Apple, 2015b). There are two benefits for this reuse and recycling programme: one is that this programme can increase the second purchasing rate; the other one is that it can support Apple’s reverse supply chain (see figure 2). Reverse supply chains can “recapture value from disposed products” (Chiara, 2011, p.772). Apple has worked with e‑waste experts to make the most use of those returnable and recoverable materials to deduce waste and the environmental influence (Apple, 2015a). Thus, this is a closed-loop reverse supply chain which can collect the old products from customers and return to the original manufacturer to reuse the reusable materials (Chiara, 2011). The reuse process
Now referring to Blue Bell Company, the shift in supply occurs when they decide to recall all their products and re-evaluate it. Blue bell will more than likely increase the price of the remaining items in the market. This is the result of consumers still providing a high amount of demand for ice cream even though there is less to supply. This theory can be accurately applied to this situation because there is no other solution that they can do to combat the consumers’ need of ice cream. For example, if they do continue to sell at the same price, soon they will not be able to produce as much as consumers want thus eliminating the good from the market.
Sustainability and Logistics are the factors that many firms try to achieve these days. With the integration of aforementioned factors, the firms can be able to achieve in cost reduction, environmental preservation, green logistics, and efficient environmental resource usage. Food industry is one of the industries that nowadays need sustainable logistics in order to save costs and preserve the surrounded circumstance.
In the 1960s through the 1970s, companies realized strong engineering, design, and manufacturing functions were strong market strategy keys to create and capture customer loyalty. As the demand for new products rose in the 1980s, these market requirements were to increase their flexibility and responsiveness to adapt existing products and processes or to develop new ones in order to meet customer needs. As manufacturing improved in the 1990s, managers began noticing material and service inputs involving suppliers and their major impact on an organization’s ability to meet customer needs. As a result of these changes, organizations now find that it difficult to manage their own organizations. First, they must be involved in the management of their network of all upstream firms that provide directly or indirectly, as well as the network of downstream firms, which are responsible for delivery and market service of the product to the end customer. In order to succeed, managers have to realize that they cannot do it alone and they must work together on a daily basis with the whole organizations in their supply chains. Because supply chain management involves all functions within an organization, managers need to know what a supply chain is, why it is important, and the impact of supply chain management on the success and profitability of their organization. Today, Wal-Mart topped the list of the America’s biggest companies on the Fortune 500 list, “with sales of almost $345 billion — more than a quarter of a trillion dollars” (Forbs). Wal-Mart’s supply chain management is becoming recognized as a core competitive strategy.
PEST analysis is a useful business tool to analyze the external factors that may affect an organization’s operation. PEST analysis includes four factors. The four factors are political, economic, social, and technological. The political factors concentrate on the role of governments in shaping business such as labor law, tax, and financial policies.
The rate of growth of the company affected the supply chain management system negatively. Sales and the company grew at a healthy rate annually, but the supply chain management system lagged in performance by comparison, based on a monolithic approach to supply chain sourcing that decentralized orders, inventory management, and the movement of products to retail stores independently by
Before analyzing Wal-Mart's corporate strategy, it is important to decide what business it is in. For example, if Wal-Mart is in the business of selling consumer goods such as TV's, sheets, clothes, etc then it is pursuing a concentric strategy by entering the food business. However, this changes depending on how you analyze what business Wal-Mart is in. Wal-Mart is in the business of selling everything customers need in their everyday lives. This includes the consumer goods listed above as well as food-service items. Even still, Wal-Mart pursues multiple strategies. Concerning concentration, Wal-Mart continually finds more consumer goods to sell at its stores which can take money from competitors. Additionally, when Wal-Mart entered into the food market, it quickly consolidated and held to good, saleable products. Wal-Mart never forays too far into a market and only sells what will make it a profit.
This would be an environmental factor of the PESTEL analysis model. When managing
Biswas, Lucata, McKee, Pulling, and Daughtraige (2000) claim that recycling objectives or items reduces its economical value because the product costs rely on its used materials more than the manufacturing service. Therefore, recycled items are usually cheaper than no recycled ones; but still consumers prefer the products that is not recycled because of its higher quality that the recycled product (Biswas et al., 2000).
Shipping over 15 million packages a day with over 390,000 part time and full time employees, UPS is the largest shipping company in the world both by volume and revenue. With that many packages, one must wonder, how does a package get from point A to point B? In this section, we will talk about the life of a shipment when it goes through UPS’s Supply Chain and Freight service.
It is suggested for any organization to review, reassess any existing supply chain management or any delivery techniques, before developing a new supply chain method so that any exposure to high risk of failure is reduced. Somerset as a company taken advantage of outsourcing and transferred it product manufacturing to China leveraging low cost labor and raw material. The labor cost and other cheap material reduce Somerset overhead cost, but there is always the risk of not delivering product on time due to the foreign country political climate, change in tax and tariff and local
This report has clearly in detail described the meaning, benefits as well as the need and challenges of the RFID in the supply chain system. While RFID comes with a larger magnitude of benefits than the bar code, it’s an expensive medium and comes at a price that may be prohibitive to many businesses. On the one hand, RFID is advantageous in different areas of the supply chain and does not require line-of-sight scanning; it helps in labor reduction, enhances visibility of products and processes , and helps in inventory management. On the other hand, RFID is an expensive solution, lacking benchmarks or standards, suffers from some adverse deployment issues, and suffers from major privacy concerns. However with the ultimate aim to see the establishment of item-level tracking which should act to revolutionize SCM practices, RFID is here to stay.
Apple Inc. is one of the world’s most successful companies when it comes to supply chain management. In its early years the company struggled forecasting demand and managing inventory causing many issues in supply chain including stock-outs. As years went on Apple began investing heavily in their supply chain, controlling many aspects such as overseas production, assembly and logistics. While Apple still faces some challenges including things such as technology, competition, global market share, and leadership, it is still ranked as a master company in supply chain according to Gartner Inc, making a great company to invest in.
UK Morepeth facility, the company’s ability to integrate over seas businesses and ramp up of
Generally, a superior supply Chain is an important and unique source of competitive advantage. Its importance is especially illuminated in Multinational companies such as Toyota. Putting this into consideration, the question that now begs for an answer is whether Toyota’s supply chain is effectively serving the organization. Without a doubt, Toyota ha...
19. Sodhi, Sunil Chopra and ManMohan S. Managing Risk to Avoid Supply Chain Breakdown. MITSloan Management Review. [Online] October 15, 2004. [Cited: February 25, 2010.] http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2004/fall/46109/managing-risk-to-avoid-supplychain-breakdown/.