History of the Monsanto Company

A Background and history on Monsanto Company, with product lines and products produced by them, along with the industry the organization currently operates in.

Monsanto Vegetable Seeds is the world’s largest seed producer. The organization founded in 1901 with a chemical product Saccharin that has evolved over the past hundred plus years (Monsanto Vegetable Seeds, n.d.). The organization, always innovative has found itself in various businesses such as plastics, turf, pharmaceuticals, food, and most recently 100% dedicated to agriculture. A cast organization such as Monsanto has many facets; however, this paper will focus on the vegetable seed division (MVS) within Monsanto. In 2005 the firm primarily focused on corn, cotton and soybean seeds and entered into an entirely new domain of vegetable seed. While its previous product lines were primarily produced, distributed and sold in a relatively small radius, vegetable seeds embarked the firm on a complete new way to manage a supply chain whereas the products may be produced in Asia, cleaned in the U.S. and sold in Europe (M. Secrest, personal communication, June 20, 2011).

Cover the issues involved with supply chain management such as placement of supply chain management within the organization and the relationship supply management holds with other departments, with an overview of management efforts in supply chain management.

Monsanto Vegetable Seeds has placed the supply chain organization within global manufacturing and supply chain. The of this group reports directly to the President of the division and the organization is about 1,000 employees strong. The supply chain heads are paired with their commercial counterparts and their marketing counterparts. This is hand...

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...ell. The key for them seems to be accurate systems, reliable data, and most importantly cross function communication. As the firm is distributing products with a short shelf life there is little room for error and they have created teams to help guide the supply chain through every step of the way. Communication is always first and rises above all other aspects of the supply chain management in this particular environment.

Works Cited

Burt, D., Petcavage, S., & Pinkerton, R. (2010). Purchasing descriptions and specifications. In Supply management (p. 129). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Monsanto Vegetable Seeds (n.d.). About us. Retrieved June 23, 2011, from https://www.monsantovegetableseeds.com/AboutUs/Pages/default.aspx

SAP (n.d.). SAP PP questions and answers. Retrieved June 23, 2011, from http://www.sap-img.com/production/pp-questions-answers.htm