Logistics Discussion Board

By

Primary Task Response:

Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions with your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

The Director of Operations for your company has been trying to introduce logistics and supply chain management principles to your management team without much success. She has excitedly called you into her office to discuss a seminar she attended last week. During the seminar, she participated in a distribution simulation, referred to as “The Beer Game” (see supporting materials below). She commented that the simulation gave her a complete understanding of what the supply chain is, the dynamics of a supply chain, and how it operates. She also found several articles that explain logistics and supply chain management very well. She requested that you conduct research to provide her with talking points that cover the fundamentals of logistics and the supply chain. She asked that you include the following in your talking points:

Provide an overview of a supply chain, including the elements that make up a supply chain.
What are the “flows” within a supply chain, and why are they important?
What are supply chain coordination and supply chain disruption, and how are these manifested in a supply chain?
Responses to Other Students:

Respond to at least two (2) of your fellow classmates( posts are below) with a reply of 100–200 words about their Primary Task Response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:

More to Read:
Decision Making in a Global Economy
What did you learn from your classmate’s posting?
What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
What clarification do you need regarding the posting?
What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates’ postings?

 

Supporting Materials for “The Beer Game”

 

Video: MASHLM usi. (2014, March 14). The beer game – MASHLM [Video file]. Retrieved from
Article: Sterman, J. D. (1992). Teaching takes off: Flight simulators for management education: “The beer game.” Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html

Student posts for response:

1.Kimberly

The supply chain is the process that a product undergoes from when it is produced to when it reaches the consumer’s hands.Supply chain management can essentially be described as overseeing (or managing) this process, managing both the components that are assembled to make the final product as well as the final product itself and the processes that these components and products go through before reaching the consumer.The supply chain begins with gathering the materials needed to produce the final product in the production stage. During the production stage, the materials that make up the product are assembled and continues through transportation, storage and handling.Transportation includes transporting the raw materials that are assembled to make the final product to the factories that assemble them together as well as transporting the final product to the warehouses where they are stored and then on to the stores where they become available for consumers to purchase.Handling takes place at several points during the transportation process as well, both in handling the materials used to complete the final product as well as handling the final product itself.

The supply chain flow is intended to begin with the gathering of materials (natural resources) needed to produce a product.These materials are collected and then transported to the factory where they are assembled into the final product.The final product is then transported to a warehouse for storage until the demand for the product needs to be met.It is then transported to the store where it will be available for purchase by consumers.Take gasoline for example.Crude oil is collected then transported to a refinery where it is processed into the gasoline that we use to fuel our automobiles and planes.Once the fuel is ready for use, it is transported to the stores where it is available for consumer purchase.

All of the parts of this process must be coordinated efficiently and effectively.Again, think of gasoline.If the supply chain is not coordinated efficiently and effectively at any point during the processes of refinement, storage or transportation, a disruption could occur, causing a gasoline shortage (a reduction in supply) which could thereby cause a spike in gasoline prices.There was a gas truck that overturned recently near my hometown that caused such a temporary shortage.The gas in the truck never made it to its destination and several local stores were impacted by this accident, running low and even completely out of fuel.Consumers had to go elsewhere to purchase gas, impacting the sales at the affected stores.

2.David

Businesses that deal in consumer goods all have a system in place that is similar or the same. This system involves the chain of separate entities that work in concert to take raw materials and turn them into a product that the consumer wants or needs. The supply chain has four parts. These parts are as follows: the retailer, the wholesaler, the distributor, and the factory. In some cases parts of the supply chain may be co-located in the same building or owned by the same company, but the supply chain itself still exists. The function of a supply chain looks different depending on what part of it you find yourself managing.

Supply chain flows describe the function of the supply chain as a whole. On the one side, orders flow from the customer back to the factory. The orders go from one manager to the next, sometimes reflecting the actual market conditions and sometimes reflecting market projections in an effort to offset delays in the supply chain from shipping, production timelines, and distribution movement. Sometimes market projections are correct, often they are exaggerations of a smaller change in the market. These small changes create reactions that are not proportional in an effort to defeat the supply chain delay. On the other side of the supply chain, the product flows from the factory over to the consumer. This direction of the supply chain is primarily affected by the flow from the other direction. Each portion of the chain is attempting to fill orders as quickly as possible, but is always subject to real world circumstances that create delays.

Supply chains are heavily affected by two concepts, supply chain coordination and supply chain disruption. Supply chain coordination is the concept of multiple portions of the supply chain working together with the aim of improving the supply chain’s performance by aligning the plans and objectives of the individual enterprises (IGI Global Idea Group, 2018). Supply chain disruption is ay major breakdown in the production or distribution nodes that comprise a supply chain (NC State University, 2011). The real world supply chain fights a constant battle to accurately predict the market, coordinate the supply chain, and recover and/or adapt to supply chain disruption.

References

IGI Global (2018) What is Supply Chain Management? Retrieved from on 01 July, 2018

SCRC SME (2011, January) How Do Supply Chain Risks Occur?: A Managerial Framework for Reducing the Impact of Disruptions to the Supply Chain, Supply Chain Resource Cooperative, NC State University, retrieved from https://scm.ncsu.edu/scm-articles/article/how-do-supply-chain-risks-occur-a-managerial-framework-for-reducing-the-impact-of-disruptions-to-the-supply-chain on 01 July 2018..

 

Last Updated on January 30, 2025

How to create Testimonial Carousel using Bootstrap5

Clients' Reviews about Our Services