Homework Paper

2

Name:

ID:

Course: BUS504E Operations and Supply Chain Management Instructor: Lyndon Augustine

1) Reviewing Chapter 2

The PowerPoint presentation slides are based on four specific objectives whereby the first objective evaluates how important is for a company to achieve strategic fit to be successful. It is outlined that companies should be in a position to identify their competitive strategy as well as Supply Chain Strategy, this helps in determining customers' needs and understand the nature of the distribution chain respectively. The first objective concludes that a company supply chain should operate and set a similar goal towards achieving customer satisfaction.

The second objective is to justify how the strategic fit between supply chain and competitive strategies is attained in a company. It is highlighted that the most important point towards companies achieving strategic fit is through understanding their consumer's needs and the right channels to supply chain capabilities. The strategic fit of a company should ensure that their attention in catering to customers' needs is proportional to the supply chain capability. The supply chain should be monitored on the other hand to ensure company achieve its goals and objective guided by the strategic fit.

The third and the fourth objectives describe the major levers of dealing with uncertainty in a supply chain and justify the importance of expanding the scope of strategic fit across the supply chain respectively. The systematic process to deal with supply chain uncertainty effectively involves identifying capacity, inventory, time, information, and price to attain company strategic fit. A company should widen its goals to allow an increased supply chain and by that, the company has better chances of achieving its goals and objective as well as a strategic fit.

2) Reviewing TED Talk

The presenter starts by defining supply chain management, he outlines that it refers to the processes involved in the flow of goods and services when they are transformed from raw material to final product. For example, in the manufacturing industry, a company dealing with car assembling utilizes different car parts to make cars, the vehicles are then sold to companies that sell ready cars to customers, some customers will buy a car on wholesale and sell them to clients and another level. The clients at this level are the final consumer of the product which started as raw material, that is how the supply chain looks like.

The presenter also justifies how a typical supply chain looks like, he mentions that it has directions from the main or focal company offering goods and services. The first direction shows how the company deals with main suppliers, then the main supplier deals with supplier 2 and to get raw material for the focal company, supply it to the company to make goods and provide services. The second direction shows how the focal company distributes finished goods and services to the final consumer, the focal company issue products to wholesalers who distribute them to retailers and then the retailers take charge and distribute to other buyers until it reaches to the final consumer.

The presenter finally discusses how people relate to the management supply chain and its importance. He mentions that effective supply chain management involves different organizations and people must be present for it to work. Even if the organization management change, the company depend on its customers and suppliers to operate, he refers to Apple company whereby the former CEO Steve Jobs outlined that it's the people who count most other that systems and tools. This shows how important humans are to organizational growth and development, people make everything function and have relevant meaning.