Supply Chain
Essays

The modern day economic agents function in a more and more dynamic business environment, in which they have to simultaneously serve the growing needs of numerous categories of stakeholders, such as customers, employees, business partners, the general public and so on. In such a setting, the firms devise and implement a wide array of methods and strategies by which to serve these needs and to also maximize their chances of attaining their pre-established business goals.

abundant leeway in controlling price, which makes it an unusually strong operator and competitor. Return on Equity A direct measure of a firm's profitability, and more specifically of its ability to use shareholder investments in a profitable manner, the return on equity measurement tells investors (and analysts, would-be investors, and anyone else who's interested) what value they can expect to derive from their investment. A highly liquid firm with significant

On January 16, 2012 Zappos' experienced its first major security breach through a compromised server at its recently opened Kentucky Distribution Center, with an experienced hacker gaining access to potentially 24 million customer records. The Zappos' internal ordering systems had encrypted passwords for safety as part of its basic architecture, yet the last four digits of credit cards, complete customer histories and contact information were all compromised (Letzing, 2012). Zappos is the world's leading online store selling women's men's, and children's shoes and accessories, and was recently sold by founder and CEO Tony Hsieh to Amazon.com for $800 million (Hsieh, 2010). As part of the sales of this massive website and online business, Tony Hsieh successfully negotiated to retain control over the logistics, supply chain and innovative approaches to warehouse management that drastically reduces the time to complete an order (McDonald, 2011).

This paper is a Porter's Five Forces analysis of a Harvard Business School Case Study of the cola wars between Coke and Pepsi. It analyzes the soda industry from the perspective of bottlers as well as from the perspective of the soda concentrate owners and projects how the industry is likely to unfold in the future. Finally, it forecasts the desirability of entering the market for a new company.

Subway Restaurants is a privately-held corporation with estimated annual revenues in the $5B range, operating 45,000 locations throughout 100 countries globally. Subway is a subsidiary of Doctor's Associates, a company founded by company founded by Peter Buck and Fred DeLuca in 1965 with a $1,000 investment in a sandwich shop on Long Island, NY (Nawrocki, 2006). Market share varies significantly by country and region of the world, with their largest market share being in the U.S. and throughout North America, with nearly 35% of total available market for quick service restaurants (QSR) in this region. Their market share through Europe and the Middle East is small, and growing quickly given the brand identity becoming more universally known The company's production and operations department is responsible for translating the strategic plan into a series of strategies and programs, enabling their fulfillment in the process. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate Subway's continual quest for quality, with specific focus on the production and operations management function. There are many aspects of quality management from the enterprise-level in QSR businesses in general and foodservice specifically (Field, 2009). And while quality management benchmarks and programs are often put into place for all types and variations of businesses that serve food, in the QSR industry has continually adopted and relied o the 14 points from Dr. Edward Deming with regard to production and operations management (Blair, 1997). The Subway Restaurants' Production and Operations Management departments are heavily reliant on these principles with communication being the most critically important of all to their success. The intent of this analysis is to illustrate how Subway is attaining critical quality goals while at the same time strengthening their business to be more resilient in the face of significant economic and industry change.

Alcan's continued revenue growth is the result of the combined success of increasing sales in four main business units, in addition to growth through acquisition. The cumulative effects of these two factors have served to create a profitable business and one where a highly decentralized organizational structure dominates (Chang, Wang, 2011). The catalyst of the organization becoming so decentralized is the continued revenue gains made across four businesses, each competing in market areas that face heavy pricing and commodity-like market conditions. Despite the heavily process-centric based approaches the industry takes to supply chain management, production and distribution, Alcan has been also able to profitably grow sales in the more mature markets they compete in. The senior management and IT departments credit the highly decentralized nature of the enterprise-wide systems that run the company. During the time period of the case, Alcan generated $23.6B in sales in 2006, and has 68,000 employees throughout its global operations that span 61 countries. The four major groups include Primary Metal, Engineered Products, Packaging and Bauxite & Alumina. Each of these business groups have their own Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and IT infrastructure. They each also have their own maintenance contracts with enterprise software vendors including SAP who the company pays approximately $100M a year in maintenance fees to. There are also the costs of operating over 400 different pricing systems, many of which duplicate functions across divisions as well. The new CIO of the company, Robert Ouellette, enters into a challenging situation and one that will require a completely different IT and organizational structure to succeed. Organizational Environment The Alcan organizational environment is highly decentralized to the point of there being four separate companies in the same corporation, each with its own entire value chain and supporting functions. As with the value chain concept, each of the four divisions has created its own main and supporting functions, and no two business units or divisions are the same. From the initial supply chain management and supplier quality management processes and systems to the supplier qualification, new product development, production and fulfillment including logistics, each business unit is significantly different than the other. When information systems and processes become unique to a given organizational business unit or division, the information and intelligence shared redefines the identity and over time, the core competencies of a business unit (Boh, Yellin, 2007). This is exactly what's happening in the four business units of Alcan during the time period of the case study. The Primary Metal, Engineered Products, Packaging and Bauxite & Alumina have in effect become their own companies, each with its own ERP, Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and myriad of pricing and distribution systems. The case states that there are over 400 different pricing systems in place across the four business units or divisions. CIO Robert Ouellette and other senior executives see the potential for consolidating all systems together and creating a centralized IT architecture. Creating a highly centralized IT architecture and framework would require the fundamental structure of the company to change significantly. It would also require an entirely new IT architecture, followed by redefinition of processes, systems and procedures throughout the company. As the information platforms or technologies of a business define not only the performance of divisions but the structure and performance of business models over time, Robert Ouellette and his staff must think strategically as to how they will modify the overall organizational structure.

The term "terrorism" is basically politically and fervently charged which compounds the struggle of providing a precise description of terrorism. Some examination studies by intellectuals have shown the fact that there are over 100 various terms of terrorism. A less diplomatically and emotionally charged denotation of terrorism is a better well-defined word that is often utilized for referring to fear.

Identifying and maintaining optimal inventory levels is a complicated and challenging enterprise. Inventory levels that are too high can cause problems, just as inventory levels that become too low can create havoc along the entire production line. Today, though, there are a number of manual and computer-assisted methods available that can help organizations of all types and sizes improve their inventory management function. To gain some fresh insights into these technologies, this paper provides a review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the business development strategies that C-level executives use today to evaluate growth opportunities globally. Included in this analysis is the Porter's Five Forces Model of…

The intent of this analysis is to provide a strategic plan framework for Apple Computer, focusing first on strategy, followed by core competencies, an assessment of key external and internal forces, and technology…