Prepared by
Xia Kong
School of Business/Graduate Studies
St. Thomas University
Miami Gardens, Fla.
Dec 5, 2013
1. Why is supply chain management so important in the new global economy? Be specific and present an example. Dr. Shailendrakumar Uttamrao Kale, working as Dean and a Professor at prestigious Sinhgad Institute of Management, Pune, has completed his dissertation named “Global Competitiveness: Role of Supply chain Management in the field of Supply Chain
Management” . He writes: “The world economy is becoming borderless and integrated, driven by global market forces, global technological forces, global cost forces and political and macro-economic forces. The integrated world economy and global competitive arena is changing the way in which companies traditionally operated. There is also geographical, functional and sectorial integration, which gives a truly global playing field to the companies and results in global supply chains. Hence Global Supply Chin is Playing vital role in Global competitiveness.”
To consider this environment, companies should change their competitive strategy. Isolation themselves from or ignorance external factors such as economic trends, competitive situations or technology innovation would result to decline of company’s development. Global Supply Chain management is so important in the new global economy.
For example, a company can develop a product in the United States due to the high technology and famous academic research achievement. For reduce the produce cost, the company can choose China or India to produce the product, because the developing country have large cheap educated laborers and good development police. As the good sales strategies, the firm can focus the Europe market, which had higher consume level than Asian and Africa market.
2. Why is it so difficult to increase productivity in the service sector? Be specific and present an example.
Lisa Bigelow and Demand Media wrote an article entitled, "Reasons That Productivity Is Difficult to Improve in the Service Sector" For that article, they write: “Productivity is the measure of an organization's ability to produce a good or a service. While organizations that produce goods can point to the total finished number of products as evidence, it's notoriously difficult to measure the service sector's productivity.”
Nevertheless, they give some reasons that increasing productivity in the service sector is difficult. Firstly, it is difficult to balance between quality and quantity. They write: “that raising the number of customers helped doesn't necessarily increase the quality of service they're provided. In fact, the opposite may be true; customers who feel they've been rushed through or given generic service may be unlikely to return.” In the service sector, for example, servicers are judged based not just on the quantity of customers they help, but on the quality, as well. The increasing productivity is not in the best interests of the customer. They are more focus on the quality served to them than quantity so that they decide to come back or not. Secondly, in the service sector, it's not always possible to increase output given the same number of input, because the input is usually people. In other words, while a goods-producing business may be able to use its resources more efficiently, a service sector business can't usually decrease its assets -- people -- without negatively affecting productivity. For example, a non-service sector company can increase productivity is to produce more goods by using high technology or research new product. While it can not improve productivity supposed the staff already maximum finished their task.
3. A new product involves the following costs associated with three possible locations. If demand is forecast to 3900 units a year, which location should be selected. Be sure to address, identify and discuss any additional