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Group Discussions Guidelines

Group discussions should be submitted before the deadline every Wednesday with no exceptions. There is a group discussion page in every PDF in the weekly folder in Canvas where group discussion questions are shown. Please discuss these questions with your groupmates then write it up in Canvas to turn it in. Please do NOT attach files. When a grade is given, everyone in the group receives the same grade. Group may choose to answer additional questions or comment on the course materials, in addition to the required answers.

Guidelines (grading rubric is in the end of this document):  Groups consist of 4 or 5 members. Please self organize into groups in Canvas. I do not

assign students into groups.  Group members should be as diverse as possible so that exposures to people who are very

different than you can be maximized for learning purposes.  Group members should meet on- and/or off-line to complete group discussions together,

rather than members divide and conquer the workload.  All primary and follow-up questions must be answered in full, with references to online

resources or class lectures/materials when necessary.  There should be a group consensus reached in the end of each question. If differences still

exist, lay out both sides of the argument.  Copying/pasting other people’s work without citing sources or receiving assistance from

other people is considered to be plagiarism and will result in a failing grade for the entire group. Such violation of academic integrity will be reported to the University.

 Groups should have a mechanism in place to ensure successful, timely submissions. No late assignments will be accepted, no matter what the reason is and who is at fault.

Example (word count, research done well, relate to questions, complete story):

Group 8

Participating members: Ann Droid, Ira Oas, Sam Sung, Hua Wei

Question: What are the global supply chain activities involved in our examples of t‐shirts, iPhones, and bananas? Please also explain one of the driving forces of the global supply chain with examples.

Globalization offers companies opportunities to simultaneously increase revenues and decrease costs. To use the T-Shirt example described as “The world behind a simple shirt” in NPR short video, we explore the activities involved with raw materials (Cotton), supplier (Machines), manufacturing (People), distribution (Boxes) and customer (You) in the global supply chain.

The T-shirt global supply chain activities start with the raw materials, mostly cotton grows in Mississippi cotton farm in the US or other countries near the manufacturing. The U.S. exports more cotton than any country in the world because their quality (color measure is high), price and mass supply are very competitive and steady. In the video, for example, the farm produced 13,000 bales of cotton, the equivalent of 9.4 million T-shirts, in 2013.

The second activity, the spinning yarn and thread are made in the Indonesia yarn house where they are provide all standardized size of fibers to satisfy with the T-shirt company’s designs. Though spinning yarn is high tech and shockingly complex, it can be standardized to make yarn with incredible precision and consistency, 24 hours a day, 361 days a year.

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The next activity of manufacturing the T-Shirt happens in Bangladesh and Columbia. The buyer, Jockey of the T-Shirt line said “there’s no country that’s ready to replace Bangladesh as the cheapest place in the world to make clothes.” Nearly 19% of their population (4 million) work for the garment industry, with an average monthly wage of $80 and long working hours.

With the activity of distribution (BOXES), the T-Shirts Line company’s get their final products ready to ship by transporting from truck and ocean freight traveling around the world. When the goods unload from the destination ports, the local shipping company will transport the goods to the customer’s warehouses or distribution centers.

As a consumer to receive or buy the T-shirt, we are the last activity from this supply chain activities.

As we perceived the t-shirt line supply chain in this video, a single T-shirt might start as US cotton, then travel to Indonesia, Bangladesh and back to the U.S., all for far less than a dollar in shipping costs. Thus, Supercheap transportation costs plays a key role that apparel companies went from making clothes in one place to managing global supply chains.

One of the driving forces of the supply chain is technology (knowledge and technology flows). With the advancement of technology, we have been able to transform the supply chain almost overnight. With technology advancements, we’ve seen greater transparency across supply chains from more accurate forecasting, better communication overall across functions, and even the ability to view your bring your full business together. Lastly, technology has made it possible for so much more innovation. Besides transparency and some of the basic functions that technology enhances in the supply chain, it also makes way for automation and robotics to make the supply chain leaner and “invisible”. It also makes way for sleeker on-demand delivery which has been something that has completely transformed the supply chain in the past few years- such as Zara, Fashionnova in fast fashion, and Amazon in making sure that the customer gets their products the next day by storing merchant inventory so that it's easy and fast to deliver.

Another driving force of global supply chain is “Global Market Forces” as international product life cycle, demand for foreign products, multinomials for growth overseas.

Considering Apple’s iPhone for example, the value chain chart shows Apple has built a global manufacturing and engineering infrastructure with facilities in California for product design and marketing and service. Also, their R&D is in Germany; Material and parts procurement is in S. Korean and Taiwan; assembly is in China and Distribution is in Japan. This network allows Apple to introduce new products simultaneously in the American, European and Asian markets. Companies use the state-of-the-art markets as learning grounds for product development, IP management, effective production management, and then transfer this knowledge to their other production facilities worldwide. With the integration of product design and the development of related manufacturing processes, they become the key success factors, where fast product introduction and extensive customization determine market success.

This logic also brings out another example of why BMW built assembly facility in the US, located in Greer, South Carolina. The company recognizes that the United States is a large market for its line up of cars and sport utility vehicles. In 2020, BMW is the 15th highest selling brands in the US. Its manufacturing facilities in the U.S. allows them to offer American car buyers a speedier delivery and its parent company more resistance to fluctuations and risks in foreign exchange and customs duties.

References:

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NPR “The world behind a simple shirt.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_supply_chain_management

https://www.obs-logistics.com/blog/how-technology-changed-supply-chain

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/three-game-changing- supply-chain-technologies

https://iimm.org/globalization-and-its-effect-on-supply-chain-management/

Grading Rubric: