my paper Essays - Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Management

Alpargatas S.A. Baxter Supply chain management is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers. Supply chain management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. In order to have an effective supply chain management a company would beat competitors to market with functional and ground-breaking products. Globalization, outsourcing and information technology have enabled many organizations, such as Dell and Hewlett Packard, to successfully operate solid collaborative supply networks in which each specialized business partner focuses on only a few key strategic activities. Organizations increasingly find that they must rely on effective supply chains, or networks, to compete in the global market and networked economy. Alpargatas are a sort of shoe that is worn by rural workers. Alpargatas was founded in 1883 by Juan Echegarary and Robert Fraser that symbolized the European heritage that is part of Argentina?s culture. In 1907, the company opened a subsidiary in San Pablo, Brazil. The company expanded as Argentina continued to grow with more immigrants and economic expansion. Alpargatas served as a textile operation that found uses for its scraps to produce floor clothes, grid clothes, and flannel. It had textile mills for the fabrication of canvas and a cotton mill that supplied the raw material for the production system. In 1989 Argentina?s election and initial transition to democracy resulted in economic turmoil accompanied by hyperinflation of up to 200% per month. With the economy in turmoil Alpargatas decided to concentrate all its efforts on its core business which is textiles and shoes. The Convertibility Plan was an economic plan that was implemented by the Economic Minister, Domingo Cavallo. As a result of privatization of government-owned companies being pursued vigorously, inflation dropped to an annual rate of 10%. In 1993, the Nike and Topper brand sports shoe had an internal transported volume of 400 thousand and an export of 60 to 70 thousand pairs per month. Casual footwear had a transported volume of 4 million a year and textiles of 30,000 outer packs (160 thousand units). Demand management is focused efforts to estimate and manage customers? demand, with the intention of using the information to shape operating costs. An issue that can occur with demand management is the lack of coordination between department?s results in little or no coordinated response to demand information. Too much emphasis is placed on forecasts of demand; with less attention on the collaborative efforts and the strategic and operational plans that need to be developed from the forecasts is another issue in demand management. A third issue is demand information is used more for tactical and operational than for strategic purposes. The end result of these issues would be to better match demand as it occurs with appropriate availability of needed product in the marketplace. Order fulfillment is in the most general sense the complete process from point of sales inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer. Sometimes Order fulfillment is used to describe the narrower act of distribution or the logistics function, however, in the broader sense it refers to the way firms respond to customer orders. An order management system is a computer software system used in a number of industries for order entry and processing. Order Management requires multiple steps in a sequential process like Capture, Validation, Fraud Check, Payment Authorization, Sourcing, Backorder management, Pick, pack, ship and associated customer communications. Order management systems usually have workflow capabilities to manage this process. Logistics might control order fulfillment, which generally consists of activities involved with filling and shipping customer orders. Order fulfillment is important because the distribution factor is the time that elapses from when a customer plac es an order until the customer receives a satisfactory fulfillment of the order. Customer service addresses strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of order management. It can be described as a philosophy, as performance measures, or as an activity. Fixed order quantity is an arrangement in which inventory level is continuously monitored and replenishment stock is ordered is fixed quantity whenever at-hand stock falls to the reorder point. Economic order quantity is the level of inventory that minimizes total