Supply chain Management - Essay Example

For instance, a pharmaceutical or biotechnological company normally handles perishable goods that must be kept under favorable environmental conditions. In effect, these conditions must be strictly adhered to while transporting and storing the products in a warehouse. However, a company might lack these important facilities during transportation and warehouse and may effectively consider contracting another company best fitted to handle such commodities during logistics. In this regard, the company contracted would maintain quality of the goods. c) Develop a strategy, and then employ specific suppliers to carry out well-defined portions of the strategy.

A manager may employ this strategy in case of situations in which there are constraints in terms of resources available in the company. For instance, a company with internal logistics expertise and working hard to expand its operation in the market may experience financial constrictions. In this regard, such a company can use its internal logistics expertise to develop a strategy internally within its operations. . However, the manager in such a company may consider outsourcing its transportation and warehousing needs of its raw materials to a company best suited to handle this.

In addition, the company may also contract another company to handle the distribution of its finished products. Question #2 a) Quick Response: In this partnership, the retailer normally establishes the amount of order they have made and the durations in restocking up. On the other hand, the supplier makes an analysis of the data from the retailer’s Point of Sale (POS) in order to develop their estimation and production schedules. Thus, the retailer is absolutely in charge of their inventory and helps their supplier in improving their functions by making available POS data for the supplier’s analysis.

In this case, this type of system is crucial in instances that the retailer-supplier relationship is in its initial stages, or has just been established and is thus new. In effect, there is little trust between the two parties making it the more suitable when compared to the two other partnerships. In addition, this type of partnership is crucial in instances where there is unavailability of efficient and sufficient personnel and facial resources. Therefore, this partnership is more appropriate than the others since financial and personnel resources inhibit the development of a more incorporated relationship while compared to VMI. b) Continuous replenishment: In this type of partnership, there is mutual trust between the retailer and the supplier making it the best type of partnership in comparison to a quick response partnership.

In this case, the supplier receives Point of Sale data from the retailer and makes shipments at intervals based on a prior agreement. In