Question

1. According to “New Study on Collaborative Execution Finds Supply Chain Collaboration Can Improve Operational Metrics by 50 Percent or More” (Bloomberg, 2012)

By a ratio of nearly two to one, supply chain professionals agreed that one of the biggest barriers to successful collaboration is a slow issue resolution process. This was identified as a systemic problem related to quality of information flow, in terms of both the granularity (level of detail) and timeliness of data shared.

And 92 percent of respondents agreed that rapid problem resolution was part of good collaboration. True collaboration can be defined in terms of speed, both in problem solving and in organizational learning. More than half of the responses indicated that speed of response in truly collaborative relationships was twice as fast or faster, with learning curve improvements more than 50 percent greater than in non-collaborative trading partner relationships.

    a. Discuss why supply chain partners may not be able to resolve issues quickly. Consider information flows in your discussion.

    b. What impacts might slow problem (issue) resolution have on the supply chain?

    c. Based on your answer to (a), discuss which enterprise systems could speed up problem resolution.

    d. What is meant by learning curve improvements?

2. In your opinion, what might limit the growth of 3D printing?

3. Distinguish between ERP and SCM software. In what ways do they complement each other? Why should they be integrated?

4. State the business value of enterprise systems and how they can be used to manage the supply chain more effectively.

5. What problems are encountered in implementing ERP systems?

6. Find examples of how two of the following organizations improve their supply chains: manufacturing, hospitals, retailing, education, construction, agribusiness, and shipping. Discuss the benefits to the organizations.

7. It is claimed that supply chains are essentially “a series of linked suppliers and customers; every customer is in turn a supplier to the next downstream organization, until the ultimate end-user.” Explain. Use a diagram.

8. Discuss why it is difficult to justify CRM.

9. A supply chain is much more powerful in the Internet marketplace. Discuss how Internet technologies can be used to manage the supply chain.

Answer 1

1 a) The supply management process typically starts with sharing forecasts and commitments. Over time, these get adjusted as new information is available.Eventually these become actual orders that need to be managed and tracked throughout their lifecycle. Inventories with their role as supply chain buffers, also need to he managed. The challenge is that these activities require working closely with multiple parties not only with h their own factories but also with all the other supply chain partners involved,such as suppliers, sub contractors, co- packers, logistics providers etc. The issue with this is that if information flow with supply chain partners cannot receive or send vital data in timely manner that may be caused by broken or slow communication.

1 b) Original equipment manufacturers often encounter road blocks that extend lead times, which can slow down and otherwise negatively impact the manufacturing process. Four issues that may be encountered that could impact the supply chain :

-Stock outs

-Lead time availability   

-Too many processes

-Disorganised inventory

1 C) Based on your user defined instructions, only critical events are sent to enterprise system. In fact mist status and informational messages are completely filtered-significantly reducing the volume of events requiring enterprise system intervention. Use the software's threshold and dependent messaging features to initiate corrective action prior to notify the enterprise system. Define thresholds to perform localised revovery actions while the wvwnt is operation within the threshold limits. In most cases these localised recovery functions can resolve the issue withou utilising enterprise system resources and technical support personnel. However, if thresholds are reached, then the event can be immediately forwarded to the enterprise system to initiate more detailed problem resolution procedures.

1 D) From a supply chain perspective, our interest is negotiating what our suppliers' costs should be for further production of units based on size of order. The foregoing are only a few of the ramifications of the effect of learnin curves.