In your view, what are the most significant obstacles or challenges hindering the development and implementation of truly reliable and interoperable public safety or emergency communications systems among all jurisdictions, disciplines, agencies and level of governments? What would you recommend in terms of a single, overarching policy or approach to achieve this goal, or at least facilitate significant progress?Do you think any progress has been made in this area since events like the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995, the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, Hurricane Katrina, or other major disasters? Why or why not?

Walmart: Pioneer in Supply Chain Management

Walmart dominates the retailing industry in terms of its sales revenues, its tremendous customer base, and its ability to drive down costs and deliver value to customers. Walmart takes pride in having received numerous accolades for its ability to continuously improve efficiency in the supply chain while meeting its corporate mandate of offering customers everyday low prices.

Supply chain management refers to a set of approaches and techniques firms use to streamline the flow of merchandise. Firms with a supply chain management focus strive to efficiently and effectively integrate their suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, stores, and transportation intermediaries into a seamless value chain in which merchandise is produced and distributed in the right quantities, to the right locations, and at the right time. Supply chain management also focuses on minimizing systemwide costs while satisfying the service levels customers require.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

Walmart dominates the retailing industry in terms of its sales revenue, its customer base, and its ability to drive down costs and deliver good value to its customers. After all, the world’s largest corporation takes pride in having received numerous accolades for its ability to continuously improve efficiency in the supply chain while meeting its corporate mandate of offering customers everyday low prices.

Tight inventory management is legendary at Walmart through its just-in-time techniques that allow the firm to boast one of the best supply chains in the world. Walmart has not only transformed its own supply chain, but influenced how vendors throughout the world operate because the company has the economic clout to request changes from its vendor partners and to receive them. Recognized for its ability to obtain merchandise from global sources, Walmart also pioneered the strategy of achieving high levels of growth and profitability through its precision control of manufacturing, inventory, and distribution. Although the company is not unique in this regard, it is by far the most successful and most influential corporation of its kind and has put into practice various innovative techniques.

When Walmart does something, it does it on a massive scale. Walmart’s computer system, for example, is second only to that of the Pentagon in storage capacity. Its information systems analyze more than 10 million daily transactions from point-of-sale data and distribute their analysis in real time both internally to its managers and externally via a satellite network to Walmart’s many suppliers, who use the information for their production planning and order shipment.

Much of the popularity of supply chain management has been attributed to the success of Walmart’s partnership with Procter & Gamble (P&G). During the 1980s, the two collaborated in building one of the first CPFR systems, a software system that linked P&G to Walmart’s distribution centers, taking advantage of advances in the world’s telecommunications infrastructure. When a Walmart store sold a particular P&G item, the information flowed directly to P&G’s planning and control systems. When the inventory level of P&G’s products at Walmart’s distribution center got to the point where it needed to reorder, the system automatically alerted P&G to ship more products. This information helped P&G plan its production. Walmart was also able to track when a P&G shipment arrived at one of its distribution warehouses, which enabled it to coordinate its own outbound shipments to stores. Both Walmart and P&G realized savings from the better inventory management and order processing, savings that in turn were passed on to Walmart’s consumers through its everyday low prices.

A history of success does not mean Walmart executives can rest. Changes in social values, economic fluctuations, technology advances, and other marketplace factors demand that Walmart continue its search for innovative ways to keep consumer prices down.

One of the ways that Walmart has been able to reduce the prices of its products, and add value to its customers, is by its continuing focus on streamlining all its _____ functions.

Multiple Choice

• supply chain management

• RFID

• marketing

• sales

• production management

Walmart probably has the most ____ in its supply chain relationships because of its size, negotiating power, and its commitment to improvement in its supply chain performance.

Multiple Choice

• weakness

• power

• franchises

• justice

• solidarity

By combining their resources and developing shared goals, Procter & Gamble and Walmart were able to increase the value to the final consumer. Their relationship is considered

Multiple Choice

• balanced.

• strategic.

• conflicting.

• combined.

• contentious.

Walmart and Procter & Gamble effectively implemented ________, which allowed for information to flow directly from Walmart's store to Procter & Gamble's production facilities. This streamlined production as well as distribution, thus reducing costs and getting products to Walmart’s customers sooner.

Multiple Choice

• electronic data interchange

• a new franchise

• horizontal channel conflict

• a corporate vertical marketing system

• ticketing and marking

The strategic relationship between Walmart and Procter & Gamble is based on __________ because both firms realize that investments in supply chain management will create savings for consumers.

Multiple Choice

• logistics

• independence

• interdependence

• conflict

• channel management

The WIZARD system at Avis

It is possible to rent cars at almost every major airport and city centre in the world, and there is

invariably intense competition to attract and keep customers. Since the hire companies all offer

similar ranges of relatively new vehicles, and the reliability of these cars is taken for granted by

most customers, competition is generally on service and/or price. The most critical service

factor is the availability of the desired category (size and specification) of car, and the speed

with which all the hire contract paperwork can be completed, so that the customer is not

unnecessarily delayed. This depends on the effectiveness of the hire company’s planning and

control system. One of the most important Avis sites in Belgium is the operation at Brussels

National Airport at Zaventem, which deals predominantly with business customers, and hires

out up to 200 cars on a busy day. Avis’s advertisement, targeted at the business market,

emphasizes its ability to process customers quickly and efficiently. The objective is to complete

the transaction in less than two minutes and this is facilitated by Avis’s well-developed

computer system, known as WIZARD, which handles all reservations, preparation of hire

contracts at the service desks, inventory management and invoicing systems. WIZARD is a

globally integrated system, with over 15,000 terminals in Avis branches worldwide, allowing

international reservations to be made with accuracy and certainty, and helping to maximize the

utilization of vehicles throughout the network.

Regular customer surveys and analyses of actual demand patterns are carried out to determine

the customers’ preferences in terms of type and category of vehicles, providing a guide to the

Belgian fleet composition, which is managed from the central ‘clearing house’ at Machelen.

Because each of the Belgian branch offices has access to a pool of cars held at Machelen, their

local buffer stock requirements can be minimized. The requirements for the movement of car

inventory between branches and between countries is centralized in this way, allowing the

branches to concentrate on the task of providing good customer service. Each regular business

customer has a unique reference number in WIZARD, allowing reservations to be made and

rental contracts to be completed quickly, with only three pieces of information: the customer’s

number, the type of car required and the duration of the hire. This type of transaction is usually

completed within two minutes, after which the customer goes directly to the car park and

collects the car.

Questions

1. What do you see as the main planning and control tasks of the Wizard system?

2. How would you evaluate the effectiveness of the planning and control activity at Avis?

East Texas Seasonings is preparing to build one processing centre to serve its four sources of seasonings. The four source locations are at coordinates shown below. Also, the volume from each source is provided. What is the centre of gravity?

The following questions are based on the letter below.

Dead Madam:

Unfortunately, because you have not paid your account for the last three months, we have absolutely NO CHOICE but to turn off your heat soon. We know that winter is upon us and it’s a horrible time to be without heat, but you really brought this on yourself.

Next time, we recommended PAYING your bills ON TIME.

If you get us your outstanding payments soon, you can keep your heat.

As always, we appreciate your business and value you as our customer.

Sincerely,
Tenaga Api Customer Service Team

1. Evaluate THREE (3) effectiveness of the letter. You are expected to include aspects of you-attitude and positive emphasis in building goodwill.
2. Rewrite the letter in a way that builds goodwill to the customer and at the same time, delivers the message.

How does population health and the necessities of financial management mesh to enable care facilities to function today toward achieving “population health” goals, while affording both existing current care physical and mental health facilities? How does this mesh with growing those which we expect to open to support and protect against the Covid-19 threats of tomorrow to operate

What is multi-tier supplier sustainability transparency and the challenges that any organization faced to maintain transparency in sustainability of their multi-tier supplier?

Alternative Water Supply

Gordon Rivers, the city manager of Saratoga, Florida, pitched the proposed design schedule back at Jay Andrews. Jay Andrews is the Project Manager for Major Design Corporation (MDC). The city of Saratoga selected MDC for this project. As project manager, it is Jay’s responsibility to assemble the technical team necessary to complete the project, develop and track the budget, establish and maintain the schedule, allocate resources as required, and manage the project until completion.

“We need the intake and transmission main designed, bid, and completed in 35 weeks. The city of Saratoga has a future $2 million dollar federal grant riding on the project getting done on time,” Mr. Rivers said. Jay nodded in agreement. Mr. Rivers continued by saying, “Jay, the project needs to come in on schedule and within the budget. Now take this schedule back and figure out how we are going to do it.”

Background Major Design Corporation is a 3,500-employee firm with annual revenues of more than $1 billion. The firm is divided into five geographically based global sales divisions, an engineering/technical services division based in the United States, and a wholly owned construction company. MDC offers full services—consulting, engineering, construction, and operations—across the “project life cycle” for water, environment, transportation, energy, and facility resources.

MDC was selected by the city of Saratoga to design a new, 10-million-gallon-per-day surface water intake and transmission main. The intake withdraws water from a canal and pumps it more than two miles to the city’s wastewater treatment plant. There, the canal water is blended with reclaimed water (i.e., treated sewage water) and distributed back to customers for irrigation purposes. This project is touted as an “alternative” water supply project because the water source is not a historically used source. The project will increase the long-term sustainability of the city because it will diversify the city’s water supply portfolio and recycle water. The project will also minimize the need for additional withdrawals from historic water sources, which have become less productive and more highly regulated in the past 10 years, as the city’s population continues to grow. Other green benefits of the project include reduced environmental impacts on the historic water sources and a reduced carbon footprint, as the irrigation water requires less energy-intensive treatment than the city’s other drinkable water sources.

Project Description The objective of the project is to design a fully functional surface water intake that is protective of the environment, will last at least 30 years, and will have a low life-cycle cost (i.e., capital, maintenance, and energy consumption). For this type of project, engineering design accounts for 20 percent of total project cost. The design stage is also important because the decisions made during design lock in 80 percent or more of the life-cycle costs of the project. As a result, engineers take a holistic approach when selecting equipment and features for projects. A piece of equipment, for example, that is inexpensive upfront may have significant, long-term maintenance costs.

The following narrative describes the main activities required to complete the AWS project. The table below provides project work activities, precedence relationships, and costs.

Alternative Water Supply

The project will begin with the development of a conceptual design (Activity A). During the conceptual design, engineers confirm the applicable regulations and laws for the project, including sustainability criteria; perform evaluations of alternative equipment; identify site conditions and constraints; and develop initial facility and equipment layouts.

Once the conceptual design is complete and MDC has received feedback on it from the city of Saratoga, preliminary design (B) begins. Preliminary design expands the design based on the preferences and constraints identified during the conceptual design. The preliminary design finalizes the project design criteria (e.g., sizing, operational capacity, reliability, and sustainability) and incorporates them (along with additional geotechnical, survey, and environmental findings) into preliminary drawings and written specifications. Drawings and specifications are the key information-intensive products that come out of this work. The drawings show how the project will look when constructed, and the specifications provide detailed guidance and criteria by which the construction is to proceed.

For this project, the completion of the preliminary design allows three other parallel tasks to begin: final design (C), environmental permit application preparation (D), and property acquisition (H). Final design is a continuation of the preliminary design stage. In final design, additional information is added to the specifications.

Environmental permit application preparation (D) involves taking certain drawings from the preliminary design and modifying them to illustrate the controls included in the project to minimize environmental impacts. To receive a permit, the engineers must demonstrate that the project will have little to no impact on the environment and be constructed in accordance with applicable laws. Typical impacts engineers try to prevent include storm water runoff from the site, pollutant discharges from the site, uncontrolled emissions from equipment, destruction of natural habitats, and displacement of endangered species. Once the environmental permit application is complete, it is submitted to a regulatory agency for review. This activity, identified as environmental permit review and approval (E), does not require any work on the part of the MDC engineers, but cannot be crashed because an outside entity is responsible for it.

Property acquisition (H) starts with the identification of all properties on which the project sits or passes through. For the properties identified that the city doesn’t currently own, the city must acquire rights to use the properties. There are two ways the city can obtain these rights. The first is to find a willing seller—a property owner who, for a price, will turn over certain property rights to the city. The second is through condemnation. Condemnation is a lengthy legal process by which the city can take the property rights from the owner by demonstrating to a court that the project serves the public good and that there are no other viable alternatives.

Upon approval of the environmental permit, the engineers can begin work on preparing the building permit application (F). This task involves filling out the application form and compiling the necessary sheets from the drawing set to illustrate that the project will be constructed to the latest local, state, and federal building codes. When the application has been completed, it is submitted to the appropriate government entities for building permit review and approval (G). During the review, the MDC engineer is not required to do any work, but, similar to the environmental permit, nothing can be done to make the review go quicker because it is done by an outside party.

When the final design is complete and the building permit issued, the city can bid the project (I). Bidding the project involves advertising the project in the local newspaper and online. Contractors interested in building the project obtain a copy of the project drawings and specifications from the city. Based on what they see in the drawings and how they interpret the specifications, each interested contractor then develops a bid that will be low enough to win the project while still allowing for a reasonable profit. During the bidding stage, MDC will assist the city by responding to contractor questions, holding a meeting to discuss the project with potential contractors (known as pre-bid meetings), and holding site visits of the actual construction site so the contractors can get a better understanding of the conditions they will face if they win the job. At the end of the bidding period, the contractors submit their bids in sealed envelopes to the city of Saratoga.

The city opens the bids and compares the submissions. The apparent low bid will be sent to MDC for review. MDC will review both the dollar amount of the bid and the other documents (e.g., drawings, references, insurance, specifications, and bonds) included in the submittal. If a low bidder has not completed the other documents properly, it is deemed non-responsive, and the engineer begins review of the next lowest bid. This process continues until the lowest responsive bidder is identified. The bid phase ends with MDC’s recommendation to the city as to which qualified contractor should be awarded the job.

Immediately following the bid phase, as long as the building permit has been issued, construction can start (J). This dummy activity has an activity time of zero. The construction start is a milestone that designates the end of the engineering design phase of the project and the beginning of the construction phase (another project).

Decisions

Jay manages about six engineering projects at any one time, so he asks you to analyze this project for ways to complete it in 35 weeks. Jay would like to meet with you tomorrow to discuss the results of your analysis.

Deliverables

1. Draw the project network diagram, and determine the normal time to complete the project, activity slack times, the critical path(s), and total project costs (i.e., baseline your project), using the Critical Path Method.

2. Determine the best way to crash the project to complete it in 35 weeks with revised activity slack times, critical path(s), and total project costs. Provide reasoning as to how all crashing decisions were made.

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HEINEKEN

1. General Environmental Analysis – Focus on the trends in the seven segments of the general environment and predict which segments you expect to have the most significance to your company in coming years;
2. Industry Analysis – Reference the five forces of competition model to judge the attractiveness of the industry (or segment of the industry) in which your company is competing;
3. Competitor Analysis – Identify competitor's strategies so your company can learn to predict their responses;
4. Internal Analysis – Analyze company's value chain to assess the organization's overall strengths and weaknesses.

What are the arguments that agree (i.e., support), and disagree (i.e., against) with the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled the First Amendment right to free speech was violated by the Federal Election Commission’s restrictions on campaign contributions by corporations and unions?

Please create a PESTEL analysis for Kirkland's, Inc. Home Decor. Answer How, for instance, is the current political environment of your organization affecting it? (Consider everything from local to national politics!) How may various changes in the political environment in the future (both the near future and further out) affect it? Repeat and answer these two questions for the economy, society and culture, technology, natural environment, and the legal and regulatory milieu.

. What are the current issues with managing the supply chain? In general, how can blockchain technology address some of the issues facing the supply chain?

2. Discuss challenges of adopting blockchain technology into a company’s existing supply chain.

3. Ideally, what kinds of companies and businesses can benefit from adopting and implementing blockchain within their supply chain?

38. A contract with an illegal principal objective is typically which of the following?
Answers:
A. Affirmed
B. Disaffirmed
C. Void
D. Voidable

39. Exceptions to the general rule that illegal contracts are void include which of the following?
Answers:
A. Divisible contracts
B. Ignorance of special regulation
C. Rescission before any illegal acts
D. All of the above.

40. Which of the following contracts are void?
Answers:
Contracts to commit crimes
Contracts to commit torts
Contracts violating codes of ethics
Both A and B

41. States make exceptions to anti-wagering statutes for which of the following?
Answers:
A. Government-run lotteries
B. Risk-shifting agreements
C. Speculative bargains
D. All of the above.

Discuss whether you agree or disagree on whether you think E-mails need to be managed and that employees/people in general should practice good "E-mail Etiquette". Share one tip you use to manage your emails "or" practice proper e-mail etiquette.