Analyzing Supply Chain Technology Essay

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Supply Chain Technologies and Collaboration / Supply Chain Analysis: Coca Cola, DHL, Amazon and John Deere Company

Supply chain management implies managing the movement of services and goods. It covers raw material storage and flow, inventory of work-in-process, and movement of finished products from the point of manufacture to the consumption point (Blanchard, 2010). This paper will review four firms, namely, Coca Cola, Amazon.com, John Deere, and DHL, for understanding their respective supply chain mechanisms and collaboration.

What did you find in terms of technologies uses for the companies researched?

Coca-Cola's supply chain operations are closely linked to SAP, in the development of software for improving supply chain efficiency. Technology created as a result of this collaboration may profit all players in the beverage sector, according to market analysts. The implementation intends to impart more information to the company, at the account and store levels, for enhancing its relationship with retail customers. The novel software ought to reduce paperwork, ensure proper cash settlements, and decrease space wastage in delivery vehicles. The beverage giant, at present, runs a number of applications for management of supply chain and Enterprise Resource Planning, including the R/3 production and material planning applications created by SAP. These systems, however, are not equipped to link back-end systems and store deliveries (Thomas, 2015). John Deere's employment of SmartOps software for logistics management has aided the organization in increasing on-time delivery of consignments to dealers by 29%age points, while simultaneously bringing about an almost one-billion-dollar decrease in inventory. Nike -- the footwear and sports apparel manufacturer -- has collaborated with DHL in the supply chain area, to implement radio-based monitoring of goods for the purpose of distribution and warehousing, in addition to introducing real-time notification of delivery. Improvements to supply chain have facilitated enhanced efficiency and cost reductions. Amazon.com, with its several dozen global distribution centers that take care of millions of goods, has to regularly engage in supply chain fine-tuning. For instance, in the year 2012, it announced its decision to purchase automated technology and robot manufacturer, Kiva Systems, to aid in its distribution activities (Vella, 2014).

What kinds of collaboration approach did these companies have with regard to their organization, technologies and their respective supply chains?

John Deere and Coca Cola have a synchronized form of collaboration in the supply chain area. That is, they do away with one point of decision-making, merging the inventory replenishment decision with supplier's materials and production planning. The supplier, in these cases, bears the responsibility of inventory replenishment of clients on the level of operation, exploiting this visibility when planning his personal supply operations. Collaboration has many benefits for organizations. Notably, collaboration grants suppliers an enhanced understanding as well as capacity to manage demand variability, which is a key feature when attempting to respond to the expensive bullwhip effect. Moreover, firms attain slight improvements in their inventory turnover. Meanwhile, Amazon and DHL make use of vendor management form of supply collaboration. In other words, the supplier is tasked with the generation of replenishment order, subsequently assuming responsibility for retailer inventory maintenance and service levels. Under this system, clients delegate replenishment-related tasks to their suppliers. With complete visibility of customer stock, suppliers become fully responsible for inventory management. This way, it may be possible to reduce inventory investment required for maintaining levels of customer service. The supplier, in fact, has a focused process for generating precisely the same orders for replenishment, depending on the very same information utilized earlier by the client for purchase decision-making. One difference is: in case of shortages, the supplier gives priority to clients whose inventories they handle. In this system, suppliers are in charge of handling clients' cycles of inventory replenishment, for supply chain acceleration and dealing with short life cycles of products. One point to be borne in mind in this context is that the term 'consignment stock' denotes supplier-owned goods stored at client site. The client isn't required to pay for any item in this consignment stock unless it is removed from it. The client is, generally, allowed to send back unused consignment stock, if it fails to meet their expected requirements (Holweg et al., 2015).

What seemed to be working well?

Both John Deere and Coca Cola, which have synchronized structure of supply collaboration, are well-organized, with superior competition advantage. This element in companies helps encourage and promote collaboration. The term 'competitive advantage' means the extent of a company's ability to develop a protectable status over rival companies with regard to the following five dimensions: product innovation, premium pricing, competitive pricing, value-to-quality for customers, and reliable delivery (Mathuramaytha, 2011).

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Meanwhile, for DHL and Amazon, which are characterized by vendor management form of supply collaboration, benefits go beyond better efficacy and productivity to cover facilitation of all parties in a given supply chain in satisfying customer demands, growing markets, and increasing their market share. Companies can attain these advantages in many creative ways during collaboration, some of which include: improving volume of sales from downstream purchasers, decreasing operational expenses, process and product innovations emerging from a trusting relationship between supply chain partners, and word-of-mouth referrals (Myers, 2010).

What were some challenges?

All of the four firms under study (i.e., Coca Cola, John Deere, DHL, and Amazon.com) are faced with multiple challenges. Some of these are: translation of data from customers into useful insights; information sharing; alignment of sales, operational, and financial forecasts; maintenance of flexible manufacturing; development of consistent, responsive fulfillment processes; supplier program rationalization; differences in communication; and, utilization of demand data in materials planning (Anderson, 1999).

Part II

What were five (5) takeaways from your research with regard to new insights, views, ideas and thoughts on supply chain technologies and collaborative approaches? Discuss.

Firstly, collaborative forecasting aids reduced inventory or improved levels of customer service (but often not both). In several instances, in fact, a trade-off is achieved between the two, or levels of service are traded among clients. Furthermore, collaboration decreases "rationing," as supplier is made responsible for replenishment. But in the event of general shortages in supply, this collaboration may break down rapidly, particularly in vendor management form of collaboration in the supply chain (Holweg, 2015). Still further, it aids in the acceleration and management of demand plans, fulfillment and direct procurement of materials all through the supply chain. Moreover, while collaboration and transparency may be hard to achieve, they are worth it, if one takes into account the likely decrease in expenditure and risks, and enhanced customer loyalty and satisfaction. The latest survey of about a thousand supply chain managers revealed that companies engaged at any level with suppliers showed 38% greater likelihood to attain or go beyond their expectations, leading to reductions in cost. Finally, the single ERP structure of Supply Technologies facilitates effectual and fruitful collaboration to customer's comfort level. The system is sufficiently flexible to allow for real-time comprehension of what is going on at different times and places, by everybody, at all locations in the world, through a user-friendly dashboard (Andrews, 2014).

Part III

Three articles are: (Anvari et al., 2011), (Aziz & Hafiz, 2013) and (Ugochukwu et al., 2012).

The "Lean Manufacturing" concept is a creation of Toyota's Manufacturing System. Its variants (like total quality management (TQM)) were initially developed in Japan's automotive industry; however, the major portion of their evolution took place in Western industrialized nations. Further, lean manufacturing and TQM have numerous common characteristics. On the basis of lean strategies, TQM, like several improvement strategies, may be considered an instrument for generating and fostering synergy, to stimulate increased market competitiveness among firms. Despite lean manufacturing and TQM sharing common roots (i.e., Japanese quality evolution), they have developed in different ways. The concept of TQM mainly became popular during the last decade of the twentieth century, among practitioners and research scholars, who wished to explain how companies ought to work for achieving improved customer satisfaction and performance levels. Frequently, the TQM concept is liked to prominent figures in the quality management field (Anvari et al., 2011). Aside from this, the global construction sector's productivity has been waning in the last four decades. One way to deal with this situation is the use of lean construction, which stems from applying a novel production management form to the construction field. Key characteristics of this form of construction are a well-defined set of delivery goals to maximize project-level performance for clients, construction, concurrent design, and project control implementation, all through the project life cycle, right from the design and planning to delivery stage. A growing number of scholars and professionals in the construction sector have been witnessed storming the bulwarks of traditional construction management for delivering enhanced value to property owners, while simultaneously achieving real profits. Consequently, lean-based instruments have arisen, which have been applied successfully to both complex and simple construction ventures. Lean construction ventures are characterized by easier management, enhanced safety, quicker completion, reduced costs and improved quality, overall. A great deal of further research needs to be carried out for completing translating traditional construction….....

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