Question

Topic 1

Book: Operations and Supply Chain Management By Jacobs & Chase 14e

1. On page 18/14 in the text there is a list of “Current Issues In Operations and Supply Chain Management”. There are surely other issues that face the modern day supply chain manager.

In your own words please

a) list at least 3 other issues not listed in the text that you feel are relevant to the task

b) Which of the other current issues listed do you feel is the most important and why?

c) What is the main difference in approach between Business Process Reengineering and TQM/Lean?

Answer 1

a)supply chain management is reasonable for getting the right products at the right time with correct quanity and at a suitable cost .supply chain management helps in predicting demand,control of stocks , improving company customer relationship as well as relationships with suppliers , distributors , and others . it receives feedback on the status of every link of supply chain . some of the issues facing by the supply chain manager are : balancing of stored boxes in the warehouse , connecting those items to the suppliers and not compromising with the quality .

1. managing suppliers
2. managing inventories
3. Maintaining quality
4. maintaining safety

b)

unemployement : traditionally ,supply chain management involved salesmen and other personnel to ensure that a transaction completes on time as per customer requirement .but now with the advent of the new supply chain management module ,personnel requirement has gone down giving rise to unemployement .as processe are mostly automated ,the newewr supply chain is faster and convienient which improves the company's objectives as well as provide good quality services to customers .

costly : supply chain management is complex and as such a company requires a huge amount of capital investment .thus it costly than the traditional method and requires management of different activities within the firm .

c)

both  Business Process Reengineering and TQM/Lean focuses on the gradual improvement of the processes and resdesigning and quality improvement . Total quality management focuses on the quality improvement and  Business Process Reengineering deals with redesigning the process for improvement .Total quality management generally maintain the customer expectation through increasing the quality of the product or service .Total quality management must be implemented successfully a n organization must follow eight key elements such as :

1. integrity
2. ethics
3. communication
4. leadership
5. teamwork
6. training
7. recognition
8. trust

Business Process Reengineering makes technological advancement and also human resurce replacement to improve the process . Business Process Reengineering increaes the productivity and increase the efficiency by using advanced techniques , also Business Process Reengineering uses automated techniques for clear and efficient working .