Business Finance Homework Help

1. Please discuss supply chains versus value chains for a manufacturer producing automobiles.
2. Describe the Supply Chain Umbrella for your current or future employer (See Exhibit 1.5).
3. Describe the four pillars of purchasing and supply chain management for your current or future employer See Exhibit 1.6).
4. Please read the Good Practice Example titled “Taking an Entrepreneurial Approach to Purchasing at Babson College” beginning on page 29 of the textbook)? Should purchasing managers become entrepreneurial in other industries? Why or why not?

these three photos will help to answer the questions. 

POST 1

My name is Michael and I’m currently a Junior with an expected graduation date of winter 2022. I currently work for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul as the coordinator for the sack lunch program in downtown Omaha that feeds the homeless. For my hobbies I like to read, spend time with my German Shepherd, and work out. I currently live in downtown Omaha and have for the past 5 years. An interesting part of living downtown would be the fact that you need to work and live with people from different walks of life, something you don’t necessarily do in other parts of Omaha.

The Supply chain for an auto manufacture would include the manufacturers of the brakes, motors, the transmission , as well as plastics, glass, and steel manufactures. Even the car dealerships and repair shops have to be figured into the supply chain. The Value chain is going to include every single person that works on every step. This will include your purchase agents and assembly line workers. This is because every person involved adds value to the product. My current’s jobs supply chain umbrella is a little less sophisticated, but a little more sporadic. Because I work for a non profit, our purchasing power is very limited. We are dependent on grants, donations, and very limited funding. For my job’s supply chain umbrella, we rely on our personal food pantry/pantry garden, the Food Bank for the Heartland (which is currently very bare), donations, largely from our volunteers, and the very generous local company Rottella’s. There are also our wholesale food suppliers for produce and other odds and ends that I work with that would be included for my job’s supply chain umbrella. I would also include the volunteers and staff members I work with as part of my job’s value chain as part of the overall supply chain umbrella.

The four pillars of Supply chain management with my current role is also a little more complicated because I once again work for a non profit. My Human Resource team would also be the few people who are in charge of organizational design because we are largely volunteer run and have a small core of paid staff who oversee both of these pillars. Our information and technology side of things is also not very sophisticated. It is all visual inventory and spoken communication. It is group effort between myself and the pantry staff, along with the SVdP store staff who help out with our logistical needs. Measurement is what falls under me. Taking note of how many lunches need to go out, what supplies are needed and/or what our current stock is, to how many lunches the volunteers need to make, ensuring the lunches are being made highest quality possible, all while making the volunteers are kept happy. Happy volunteers are critical because they are unpaid help and can leave at anytime. All measurement and performance metrics fall under me.

Finally, in response to people becoming entrepreneurial in other industries, it has a good and a bad side. In the example given on page #29 at Babson College, all the spending, with the exception of athletics, was put under one department. That on department centralized all purchases and saved money. They even profited of how the system was set up. However, everything came down to one person. While this is great in the short term, it leaves a future long term problem. When this person retires, will the program be able to continue? In today’s current climate, supply chains are collapsing all around us. Are they going to be able to continue service in the same profitability? What would the back up plan be when they can no longer get all the supplies they need? There is a certain danger to putting all your eggs in one basket.

The second one:

1. Hello, my name is Alyssa Fitch. I already have graduated with my Business Administration degree with a concentration in International and Management. I came back this fall to take a couple more courses so I could study for my APICS certification. I currently work the night shift in a Warehouse at 3M in Valley, Nebraska. But, I ideally would like to get my APIC CLTD (certified in logistics, transportation, and distribution) to become an analyst at 3M. When needing a chance to just relax and enjoy a favorite movie I always watch Zootopia from Disney.

2. Recently, while showing some visitors the city of Omaha, NE, I learned from a restaurant owner that the Reuben Sandwich was invented in Omaha, one late night at Blackstone Hotel.

3. In chapter 1 of the textbook, starting on page thirteen, you see the difference between supply chains and value chains. Which a supply chain represents, three or more companies, that link their steps for an automotive company so they can make their products/services and have them end up in the customers’ hands per customers’ requests. Whereas value chain goes into further detail on how the automotive company will choose which supplier to go through in order to get their raw materials, to adding value so it can be manufactured while following up with distributing it to the final destination to allow customers to purchase the automotive’s products/services. The value chain creates a competitive advantage for the automobile company.

4. For 3M, their supply chain umbrella would be,

A general supply chain umbrella for 3M is Purchasing —> Inbound Transportation —> Receiving & Stores —> Demand & Supply Management —> Material Control —> Quality Control —> Order Processing —> Shipping/Warehousing Distribution —> Outbound Transportation —> Customer Service. Every day at work, I am part of 3M’s supply chain umbrella. I would fulfill the shipping/warehousing distribution step as I pick up raw materials/final products so it can either be stored in a warehouse if their raw materials, or shipped out if they are final products. For example with COVID-19, there was a popular mask called N95, my manufacturing plant is one of two manufacturing plants within 3M that produce these. Therefore, the supply chain umbrella for the N95 mask is; Demand and Supply Planning —> Purchasing —> Inbound Transportation —> Material Control —> Quality Control —> Order Processing —> Shipping/Warehousing Distribution —> Outbound Transportation —> Customer Service. For the N95, 3M already knew there was a high demand as the masks were being bought faster than they could be made. Therefore, 3M rearranged their supply chain umbrella to increase production in order to get masks to the final customer faster.

5. The four pillars of purchasing and supply chain management are described through human resources, organizational design, information technology, and measurements.

Within 3M human resources would understand the role in which 3M plays within the market. Once that is identified 3M is able to use organizational design to create, build strong, and nurture relationships with suppliers. Taking those two pillars, now using the information technology 3M can now create a quantitative and qualitative advantage. Now, no company ever is satisfied with what they have created, they want to do more. Therefore with measurement, using data 3M can figure out the risks in expanding their supply chain into more products.

6. After reading “Taking an Entrepreneurial Approach to Purchasing at Babson College”, I came to the conclusion that when becoming a successful purchasing manager, it is very durable to become entrepreneurial in other industries as well. An entrepreneur would need to come up with a product/service and figure out how to get it to the customer. If already being a successful purchasing manager, then one skill set that is already learned is persistence. With persistence, it’s already learned to find ways to keep getting better, cut costs, time, lost products, etc. Then, in the beginning, steps of the supply chain could be fast-forwarded through as they would already have experience with suppliers, advantages and disadvantages of each step of the supply chain, overall the experience of what has worked already and just tweaking it to their product/service in which they created.