Aditya Digital TV – Deciding on Warehouse Locations

Due to liberalization of the Indian economy, the TV industry in India is facing two problems: overcapacity among the local manufacturers and the killing competition on the marketing front. Apart from the national brands of the Indian manufacturers, there are the foreign brands that command a considerable market share, which is worrying the local

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Karan Automotives Company – Restructuring Physical Distribution System

Karan Automotives Co. (KAC) was founded in 1960 to manufacture automotive spark plugs and die­sel fuel injection equipment in India. The company has a virtual monopoly in the products range they manufacture. The other products they manufacture include auto-electrical, special-purpose machines, hydraulic and pneumatic equipment, portable electrical tools, and so on. With the grow­ing

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Mohini Electronics Ltd. – Supply Chain Initiative Reaping Benefits

1. INDIAN CONSUMER DURABLES INDUSTRY The consumer durables industry in India has become highly competitive in the recent past. The entry of large-scale players has irrevocably changed the landscape, serving the Indian consumer like never before with bewildering array of products. Today, in addition to the multiple choices in the models, the products are

Rubber Products – Redesigning Supply Chain on the Technology Platform

Indian tyre industry is at a crossroads due to the various challenges it is facing after the lib­eralization of the Indian economy in 1991. It is a technology-driven industry and very much dependent on rubber as the major raw material input to the final product. Firms that have their rubber plantations have a better

Tushar Enterprises – Consolidating Distribution Systems

Tushar Enterprises is one of the biggest and oldest business houses in the country involved in manufac­turing and trading of pharmaceuticals, consumer durables, FMCG and industrial products. The prod­ucts handled by the company are either commanding number one or two positions in the respective industry sectors. Tushar Enterprises, a proprietary concern, started its activities

Padmini Motors Ltd – A Lean Supply Chain Through the ‘Just-In-Time’ System

After the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991, the auto sector was one of the first few industries to face stiff competition from the foreign MNCs, who sought a foothold on Indian soil to tap the fast-growing market. The auto manufacturers lost their government protection umbrella and had no other alternative but to

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Dora Ceramic Tiles – Preparing to Meet Supply Chain Challenges of Tomorrow

Ceramic Tiles is one of the few Indian industries having a very high growth potential. This is due to the rapid changes in lifestyles and tastes of the people during the last 10 years. Tiles (wall and flooring) have been accepted as lifestyle products and are used for the interior decoration of houses. From

Shree Cements – Freight Reduction through Transportation Mix

India perhaps is the only country in the world offering incentives for setting up cement plants. But these tax incentives often give an unfair advantage to the new players by allowing them to retain the sales tax collected from consumers. The players use these incentives to penetrate the market by undercutting their competitors and

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What Is a Supply Chain?

A supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer request. The supply chain includes not only the manufacturer and suppliers, but also transporters, warehouses, retailers, and even customers themselves. Within each organization, such as a manu­facturer, the supply chain includes all functions involved in receiving and filling a

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The Objective of a Supply Chain

The objective of every supply chain should be to maximize the overall value generated. The value (also known as supply chain surplus) a supply chain generates is the difference between what the value of the final product is to the customer and the costs the entire supply chain incurs in filling the customer’s request.

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The Importance of Supply Chain Decisions

There is a close connection between the design and management of supply chain flows (product, information, and funds) and the success of a supply chain. Walmart, Amazon, and Seven-Eleven Japan are examples of companies that have built their success on superior design, planning, and operation of their supply chain. In contrast, the failure of

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Decision Phases in a Supply Chain

Successful supply chain management requires many decisions relating to the flow of informa­tion, product, and funds. Each decision should be made to raise the supply chain surplus. These decisions fall into three categories or phases, depending on the frequency of each decision and the time frame during which a decision phase has an impact.

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Process Views of a Supply Chain

A supply chain is a sequence of processes and flows that take place within and between different stages and combine to fill a customer need for a product. There are two ways to view the pro­cesses performed in a supply chain. Cycle View: The processes in a supply chain are divided into a series

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Examples of Supply Chains

In this section, we consider several supply chains and raise questions that must be answered dur­ing their design, planning, and operation phases. In later chapters, we discuss concepts and pres­ent methodologies that can be used to answer these questions. 1. Gateway and Apple: Two Different Journeys into Retailing Gateway was founded in 1985 as

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Competitive and Supply Chain Strategies

A company’s competitive strategy defines, relative to its competitors, the set of customer needs that it seeks to satisfy through its products and services. For example, Walmart aims to provide high availability of a variety of products of reasonable quality at low prices. Most products sold at Walmart are commonplace (everything from home appliances

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Achieving Strategic Fit by Supply Chain

Strategic fit requires that both the competitive and supply chain strategies of a company have aligned goals. It refers to consistency between the customer priorities that the competitive strat­egy hopes to satisfy and the supply chain capabilities that the supply chain strategy aims to build. For a company to achieve strategic fit, it must

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Expanding Strategic Scope in the Supply Chain

A key issue relating to strategic fit is the scope, in terms of supply chain stages, across which the strategic fit applies. Scope of strategic fit refers to the functions within the firm and stages across the supply chain that devise an integrated strategy with an aligned objective. At one extreme, every operation within

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Challenges to Achieving and Maintaining Strategic Fit in the Supply Chain

The key to achieving strategic fit is a company’s ability to find a balance between responsiveness and efficiency that best matches the needs of its target customers. In deciding where this balance should be located on the responsiveness spectrum, companies face many challenges. On one hand, these challenges have made it much more difficult

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Financial Measures of Supply Chain Performance

In Chapter 1, we discussed how growing the supply chain surplus is the ultimate goal of a supply chain. Our premise was that increasing the surplus allows for a growth of supply chain profitability, which facilitates an improvement in the financial performance of each member of the supply chain. In this section, we define

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Drivers of Supply Chain Performance

The strategic fit discussed in Chapter 2 requires that a company’s supply chain achieve the bal­ance between responsiveness and efficiency that best supports the company’s competitive strat­egy. A supply chain’s performance in terms of responsiveness and efficiency is based on the interaction between the following logistical and cross-functional drivers of supply chain perfor­mance: facilities,

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