The main problem that Excel is confronted with is should the company try to expand into supply chain planning. The main question on the table is does Excel have the ability to complete the entire task in a supply chain from planning to execution? As is, Excel is the largest provider of freight management and contract logistics, and has four teams to accomplish everything they provide. Their four teams include: business development, solutions design, implementation, and operations. With Excel’s great success and achievements in all their past contracts, the company would like to expand into supply chain planning with the help of Haus Mart since they have be in a long standing relationship and already know Haus Mart’s supply chain. If Haus-Mart chooses to do nothing, then so be it. Excel and find another company to allow them to test out their new strategy. There are several adverse reactions to not allowing Excel to help out Haus-Mart’s supply chain network. Some of these reactions would be: weakening the relationship between companies and loss of an opportunity to improve them more. It is ultimately up to Haus-Mart if the company is comfortable allowing Excel to try out a new strategy on them. At bare minimum, Haus-Mart should at least allow Excel to continue performing the supply chain activities that they have perfected over the years. This way, Haus-Mart is getting partially what they want and if another company chooses to be Excel’s test subject and is successful than Haus-Mart can ask for the same once the new strategy has been perfected. There some positives that come from choosing Excel that can be guaranteed, such as: profitability, a strong relationship and have access to a 4PL. The case information has provided;... ... middle of paper ... ...problem. I would suggest that Haus-Mart allows Excel to try out their new strategy with either their private label branding branch or their name-brand branch. My only concern with letting Excel take of the name-brand branch is that, Haus-Mart makes 70% of their profit. If Excel were to mess up it would hurt greatly. Then this is the same as playing with the stock mart. If Excel were to succeed the reward would be worth the risk. Again, if Excel succeeds with the first area then they can apply the strategy to the other area later, but it will cause uniformity to be off between the two areas. This could cause problems as well but hopefully it would only last for a short period of time. Even with all the risk and benefits, with how uncomfortable Haus-Mart is with allowing Excel to completely take over, it would be best for both parties if a middle ground was found.
Any time the company is looking into software project, there are areas associated with risk such as cost, time and relationship with suppliers. However, for Harley-Davidson, “collocation of suppliers with production facilities and their integration into company’s development process was the essential part of long-term relationship development”. Through a continued focus on collaboration and strong supplier relationships, the company could position itself to achieve strategic objectives and deliver cost and quality improvement over the long-term. Since, at that time company had no centralized system in place to handle relationship with suppliers and consequently, most of company’s time was spent on supplier management activities. For example, reviewing inventory, expediting and data entry. Furthermore, each supplier had different information systems for “Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO), Original Equipment (OE), Parts and Accessories (P&A), and General Merchandising (GM) purchasing activities”. The systems, already provided by supplier, had to be further modified to meet individual need at each location, such as “the OE system at Harley-Davidson’s York, Pennsylvania site was different from the OE system in Kansas City”. However, due to long-standing tradition of gradual change implementation and focus on quality, quick transitions were unwelcome and did not come easy for the company. The size of the project determined how much risk was involved in terms of cost, time, and supplier relationships. The idea of switching to global purchasing system was seen as a threat not only in supplies and production flow interruption, but also in damaged dealer/customer relationships and lost sales. Furthermore, failure of the sy...
Understanding the changes in the market and the growth of e-commerce prompted the organization to invest heavily in its supply chain management forecasting and management system. The development of a network of distribution centers and Direct Fulfillment Centers to position the company to capitalize on the growing e-commerce market indicate a strong understanding of the need to adapt to changing market forces. The company spent over $300 million on new distribution center facilities in 2014 alone, and continues to expand to maintain efficiency in product movement (Cassidy,
The Home Depot is one company, of many, in the home improvement industry. This market is relatively easy to enter, in fact many materials, previously only at home improvement facilities are now available at e-commerce sites, such as “Amazon.com”. There are multiple suppliers, but those in the industry attempt to negotiate contracts with suppliers, limiting them to whom they may supply. Buyers have a great deal of power as the products sold are easily able to be substituted by products at other organizations in the industry. However, the Home Depot has built its organization so that replication of their processes and systems would be extremely difficult to replicate. They value their employees, their customers, the environment, and finance
In the 1960s through the 1970s, companies realized strong engineering, design, and manufacturing functions were strong market strategy keys to create and capture customer loyalty. As the demand for new products rose in the 1980s, these market requirements were to increase their flexibility and responsiveness to adapt existing products and processes or to develop new ones in order to meet customer needs. As manufacturing improved in the 1990s, managers began noticing material and service inputs involving suppliers and their major impact on an organization’s ability to meet customer needs. As a result of these changes, organizations now find that it difficult to manage their own organizations. First, they must be involved in the management of their network of all upstream firms that provide directly or indirectly, as well as the network of downstream firms, which are responsible for delivery and market service of the product to the end customer. In order to succeed, managers have to realize that they cannot do it alone and they must work together on a daily basis with the whole organizations in their supply chains. Because supply chain management involves all functions within an organization, managers need to know what a supply chain is, why it is important, and the impact of supply chain management on the success and profitability of their organization. Today, Wal-Mart topped the list of the America’s biggest companies on the Fortune 500 list, “with sales of almost $345 billion — more than a quarter of a trillion dollars” (Forbs). Wal-Mart’s supply chain management is becoming recognized as a core competitive strategy.
Mark have approved and think that it will be a fair way of choosing a
Stair, R.M., Reynolds, G.W., Gelinas, J.U. Jr., Sutton, S.G., Hunton, J.E., Albright, S.C., Winston, W.L. & Zappe, C. (2007) Accounting Information Systems and Financial Modelling, Thomson, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The furniture company Somerset needs to retain its customer service record and remedy any of its global supply chain issues before it has an adverse effect on the brand and start losing customers. With a frequent change in the product catalog, keeping an excessive inventory will cut its profit and some of the product may become obsolete even before the furniture hits the retail outlet stores. In order to achieve profit and success, business employee many strategies and the supply chain strategy are one of the operational management techniques that use analytical decision making process to achieve the company goals and provide tools to effectively compete in the market (Taylor and Russell, 2014).
Coyle, J., Langley, C., Gibson, B., Novack, R. and Bardi, E. (2008).Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspective. 8th ed. Cengage Learning, p.366.
Excel or Word) as the expenses from a very large numbers of users funds that a lot of properties can be applied to its development
Lean manufacturing and just-in-time processing are great business strategies that can severely stress a supply chain. The supply chain and supply chain management is a critical operations management element for any major company to succeed and remain competitive in the global market. The supply chain is one of many pieces critical to maximizing value to the end customer and requires close management to minimize external impacts. If a company is relying on another company to supply the raw materials needed for their production line, then impacts to this other company could impact their supply chain. Careful risk management is needed to optimize performance. As a company expands into global markets and global suppliers, this risk and management challenge is multiplied. The global nature of the company could impact important activities such as transportation, funds transfers, suppliers, distributors, accounting and information sharing. Disruption to the supply chain can significantly reduce revenue, cut market share, inflate costs and threaten production. A major disruption would have obvious impacts to profit, but could have additional intangible impacts to the credibility of the company if products are not delivered on time.
In my findings I found that spreadsheets are widely used by a variety of different people and thousands of different businesses use it to solve there complex problems. Spreadsheets can save businesses from future bankruptcy. They can be used to find weaknesses in business strategies and to take advantage of strategies that are working more to make them more effective e.g. if a product is selling extremely well they can raise the price. Spreadsheets can be used for almost anything and are very useful and will be continued to be used in the future.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is a renowned retail goods superstore that sits atop the Fortune list at number one. It would be very difficult to find an individual who is unaware of Walmart’s position as the largest brick-and-mortar retail chain in the world. The company has thrived over the past few years and is continuing to grow by effectively managing its store operations and distribution strategies. One of the major contributors to the business consistently meeting market expectations is directly attributable to their management approach. Walmart has revolutionized the way retail companies manage their supply chains in more ways than one. But, perhaps the most revolutionary was the practice of unprecedented coordination with suppliers (Chekwa,
As Miss White needed help to keep track of monthly payments made by the 10 pupils in her group and to keep a monthly record of individual payments, a running total for each pupil, the overall total collected each month and the average amount per pupil collected each month. The overall cost of the trip is £500 per pupil between the months of October to March excluding December.
Today, there is a range of computerised systems in the market that business can use to keep track of their finances; few of the most recognised for their performance are Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, QuickBooks, SA...
This Case has been prepared by Prof. Surya Mishra, KIIT School of Management, KIIT University from publicly available data. This is intended as a basis for discussion by students in the classroom and not to demonstrate right or wrong business approaches. Nothing written hereunder can be construed as an endorsement or commentary on business practices. This case has not been prepared with any inside information or primary research and is not authorized or sponsored by any of the business entities mentioned hereunder.