MGMT 4043: Individual Strategic Supply Chain Assignment
Your Role:
Congratulations! You are on the verge of starting up a company. A very exciting time indeed! As the CEO and president of the company, you find yourself very busy and consumed by product and service development. Often, supply chain development is not considered at the start of the process however you quickly realize, after enrolling in MGMT4043, that your company’s supply chain may be responsible for up to 80% of your expenditures and any error in supply chain management, may quickly erode any profit your company may earn. In fact, mismanagement for your supply chain, may even force your company into bankruptcy and closure.
You Task:
Taking into consideration your company/potential company/idea for a company as a case study, provide an analyse of your company as it relates to supply chain. Using the “How to Analyze a Case” as a framework for your paper, you are required to assess, recommend and develop a supply chain strategy specific to your company or idea. The following are decision areas, as taken from the course, you MAY WISH to consider when developing your strategy:
| Decision Area | Issues/ Questions |
| Supply Processes and Technology | -Reverse Auction – Standardization – Requisition – Bill of Material -RFx (RFI, RFP, RFQ) – ERP |
| Make, Buy, Insourcing, Outsourcing | -Insourcing: Capacity and utilization of resources – Out Sourcing – Off Shoring – Subcontracting – Product “Repatriation” |
| Need Identification and Specification | – Simplification – Categories of needs – Early Supplier Involvement |
| Quality | – Sustainability – reliability – Costs (of quality) – Lean, TQM, QFD, SPC – Quality Standards |
| Quantity & Inventory | – JIT (Lean Supply) – VMI – EOQ – MRP – CRP – Types of Inventory – ABC Classification |
| Delivery | – 3PL – Modes of Transportation – “Best value” Decision – Rates – Ignore “FOB” Section – |
| Price | – Costs – Direct & Indirect – Pricing – Purchase types – Discounting – Contract Pricing – Commodity Buying |
| Cost Management | – Spend Categories: Bottleneck, Strategic, Routine, Commodity – TCO – Target Costing – Negotiation |
| Supplier Section, Supplier Evaluation & Relationships | -Single source, dual sources, or more than two? -Purchasing from a manufacturer or a distributor? -Supplier location? -Relative to our organization, should the Supplier be small, medium, or large? -If no Supplier can be found, should we use Supplier development? |
| Global Supply Management | -Selection and management of offshore suppliers? -Assuring value from our global supply network? |
| Legal and Ethics | -Do the legal records reflect the commercial agreement? -How can we confirm the legal record? -How can we assure that supply personnel deal ethically and in conformance with regulatory requirements as well as organizational values? |
As part of your business case analysis and strategy recommendation, you are to included an analysis on the following:
- Strategy Viability- based on the analysis of the supply chain, is the company still viable
- Management Decisions and Direction- Are there certain things management will be directly you to do, regardless as to recommendations from the supply chain assessment
- Impact on Financial results – A model on financial impact will greatly strengthen your strategy. For example, if you are opting for a offshoring strategy, provide a cost benefits analysis to compare against insourcing or local out sourcing assuming a total costing model.
- Acceptance into society. For example, fair trade supply is favourable while supply that exploits the cheaper international labour markets is not favourable.
The Paper:
Length: 2500 words, typed, spacing 1.5, in font size of 11 or 12
Paper Format: Business Case Format
- Situational Analysis (15-20% of Grade)
- Assumptions and Missing Information (15-20%)
- Problem Definition (10-15%)
- Development of Alternatives (20-25%)
- Evaluation of Alternatives and Recommendation to Management (20-25%)
Paper Submission: Hard (Paper) Copy
Due Date: Week 13
Citations: As required, MLA Format