Supply Chain Management Case Study

Customer-centered organizations deal a great deal with customer service, which can make or break an organization. Customers play a huge role in the success of companies so making sure they are happy with their product and/or service as well as their interactions with staff is critical to the company. This firm may have needed a change to their organizational structure to increase their business as well as their customer satisfaction. “One of the most important management skills in services today is the ability to lead organizational change” (Taylor, 2014). Managers see change as necessary and this firm is taking the right steps in evaluating how that change will affect its staff.

Sampling plays a large role in research where researchers want

At CSX Transportation, employees in the Procurement and Supply Chain Management (P&SCM) department carry out numerous varying tasks, including inventory management, parts identification, equipment operation, purchasing, and so on. In attempting to perform a study of the skills desired by the management of this department, probability sampling of both hiring managers and operations managers would be beneficial. According to Cooper and Schindler (2014), probability sampling provides “confidence estimates of various parameters that cannot be made with nonprobability samples” (p. 348). The appropriate sampling method for use in determining the desired skills necessary in supply chain management at CSX will depend on factors such as cost and population size. Following is a discussion of the various sampling designs provided by Cooper and Schindler (2014).

Simple Random

Simple Random sampling offers an equal chance of selection for each member of the population. The probability of selection is determined by dividing the sample size by the population size (Cooper & Schindler, 2014). In the case of CSX’s P&SCM department, the simple random sample would provide an equal chance to every hiring and operations manager to provide input as to their preferred new hire skills, thus allowing an accurate representation of skills desired across the board.