This study analyses the shift in the relationship between large and smaller firms from confrontation and conflict, to cooperation and mutual assistance. It charts the pace of the adaption of Japanese style buyer-supplier relations in North American and Western European organizations.
Today, supply chain transformation for creating customer value continues to be a priority for many companies, as it enables them to gain a competitive advantage. While value creation is shaped by external drivers such as market volatility, technology, product and service offering and disruption, it can be stymied by the internal stresses arising from the need to minimize costs, limitations in process redesign, waste minimization and the unavailability of knowledge capital. Therefore, for companies to survive and prosper, the relevant questions to ask would be how to identify the external/internal forces driving changes and how to map the business drivers to the attributes of transformation. While the contemporary supply chain is well-structured, the evolving economic system is causing disruptions to this structure. The emergence of novel business paradigms – non applicability of the traditional laws of supply and demand, dominance of negative externality effects and anomalies of high growth rate coexisting with high supply side uncertainty – must be recognized in transforming supply chains. For example, healthcare delivery and humanitarian relief do not follow known supply/demand relationships; the negative externality effects are increasing sustainability concerns; and emerging economies, with dysfunctional business infrastructure, must manage high growth rates. This book delves into the transformation issues in supply chains and extends the concepts to incorporate emerging issues. It does so through ten chapters, divided into three sections. The first section establishes the framework for transformation, while the second focuses on the transformation of current chains in terms of products, processes, supply base, procurement, logistics and fulfillment. Section three is devoted to capturing the key issues in transforming supply chains for emerging economies, humanitarian relief, sustainability and healthcare delivery. This work will be of interest to both academics and industrial practitioners and will be of great value to graduate students in business and engineering. It raises many questions, some provocative and provides many leads for in-depth research. Several approaches are suggested for new problems along with a discussion of case studies and examples from different industries.
There’s a new buzz phrase in the air: Supplier Relationship Management (SRM). Corporate executives know it’s necessary, but there’s only one problem. Nobody yet knows how to do it. Or they think it’s all about bashing your vendors over the head until they reduce the price another 4%. Supplier Relationship Management: How to Maximize Vendor Value and Opportunity changes all that. Containing the best and most innovative advice from the operations and procurement experts at consultant AT Kearney, this book shows that SRM is at root a strategic discussion requiring cross-functional interaction and internal alignment at the highest levels. It requires an honest appraisal of the value that suppliers now bring to your firm, as well as their potential value. It then requires a frank and constructive business-to-business dialogue about how to improve the relationship. When this happens, a company reaps myriad benefits, ranging from new opportunity to added value to competitive advantage—and, quite likely, to overall (and sometimes substantial) cost reductions. This book shows the most concrete methods you can use today to: Identify value-adding opportunities in the supply chain Work closely with suppliers to maximize the benefits Work the "Critical Cluster" of suppliers, where the greatest opportunity for advantage lies Review suppliers to encourage constant gains in quality and cost Turn your SRM strategy into a major competitive advantage Supplier Relationship Management introduces and explains the Supplier Interaction Model, a key tool that will help you get the most from your supplier relationships. It segments the supplier universe into nine categories, from those you want to run away from fast to those so good and so useful to your organization that it can make sense to invest in them directly. Numerous case studies show how to apply the principles to your situation. Supplier Relationship Management burns off the fog that has surrounded the procurement process for far too long. It is the definitive guide for business executives who want to get the maximum benefits from suppliers and gain very real advantages over competitors.
Beginning in the mid-2010s, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has seen remarkable changes in information technology that have blurred the boundaries between the physical, digital and biological worlds. Industry 4.0 has enabled so-called smart factories in which computer systems equipped with machine learning algorithms can learn and control robotics with minimal need for human input. While smart technology has enabled many manufacturing businesses to increase efficiency and cut costs, many others are still struggling with implementing it. This book aims to help students, practitioners and industry leaders to become change agents and take their first steps on the path of transformation. Smart Business and Digital Transformation addresses the challenge of becoming "smart" from three different perspectives: smart factory, smart industry and smart environment. Covering technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, 5G and big data analytics, the book shows how enterprises can take advantage of them and ultimately beat the competition. The book considers the importance of operational processes, business models and organisational culture. The contributing authors and editors, based at Corvinus University, present a multidimensional picture of Industry 4.0 which is both diverse in its voices and unified in its vision. Smart Business and Digital Transformation meets the growing demand for a textbook that not only presents the latest concepts and theories but is also practical for planning, managing and implementing digital transformation in practice. The chapters include case studies to demonstrate the practical applications, and each chapter ends with review and discussion questions to develop students’ skills and competencies. Students of business and digital transformation on advanced undergraduate and MBA courses will find it an indispensable guide to a vibrant and challenging topic.
The proceedings of the "Economics and Business Competitiveness International Conference" (EBCICON) provides a selection of papers, either research results or literature reviews, on business transformation in the digital era. Nine major subject areas, comprising accounting and governance, customer relations, entrepreneurship, environmental issues, finance and investment, human capital, industrial revolution 4.0, international issues, and operations and supply chain management are presented in the proceedings. These papers will provide new insights into the knowledge and practice of business and economics in the digital era. Therefore, parties involved in business and economics such as academics, practitioners, business leaders, and others will be interested in the contents of the proceedings.
The future of British manufacturing is of immense importance and topicality. As we slide towards a service sector economy based on finance and tourism, it is worth reflecting on whether this is the most appropriate or inevitable scenario. Manufacturing in Transition makes a genuinely interdisciplinary contribution to the debate over the UK's strategy for industrial renewal. Aimed primarily at business, economics and industrial relations students, it looks at the current state of British manufacturing sector within the global economy and asks whether manufacturing matters in the twenty first century. The books explores key issues such as: the chances of renewal * developments in the management and organisation of operations and supply chains * the differences made by Japanese methods This is a timely assessment of the UK's industrial development and makes a major contribution to debates over the industrial strategy and the position of manufacturing within industrialized economies.
Apply Six Sigma to Your #1 Business Challenge: Pricing “Six Sigma is well known for having helped companies save billions of dollars. This book is the first to show us how to use it on the revenue side of the equation to generate profitable growth. This step-by-step guide will be an instant classic—a seminal book on a topic critical to profitability.” —Robert Cross, Chairman and CEO, Revenue Analytics Inc. and author of Revenue Management “Six Sigma Pricing provides companies with a practical toolkit to improve their price management. The authors show executives how to use Six Sigma tools in their pricing processes and instantly improve profits and their bottom-line. This is a truly ‘must-have’ resource for managers everywhere.” —Eric Mitchell, President, Professional Pricing Society Many companies have developed solid sales strategies– but without equally good pricing operations, those strategies alone will not add a dime to the bottom line. The goal of pricing operations is to consistently control price deviations in transactions and contracts over time and across customer segments. This goal of ensuring the prices are not too low or too high in different transactions relative to guidelines lends itself perfectly to Six Sigma. Using the authors’ breakthrough Six Sigma-based approach, you can systematically eliminate pricing-related revenue leaks, driving higher profits without alienating customers. You’ll learn how to define pricing “defects,” gather and analyze relevant pricing data, review pricing-agreement processes, identify and control failures, implement improvements, and then ensure continuous, ongoing improvement in price, profits and customer satisfaction. The book reflects the authors’ pioneering experience implementing Six Sigma pricing. Whether you’re a business leader, strategist, manager, consultant, or Six Sigma specialist, it will help you or your client recover profits that have been slipping through the cracks in pricing operations. •Learn why Six Sigma Pricing makes sense Why you should target pricing operations, and how to do it • Identify profit leaks from inefficient pricing operations Why “sloppy pricing” occurs, how to find it, and how to root it out • Illuminate your current pricing processes, so you can improve them Understand your market-facing and internally focused pricing processes pertaining to product launch and lifecycle price management, price increases due to escalation in costs of raw materials, promotions, and discounting • Set up your pricing operations for continuous improvement in line with your pricing and sales strategy Use Six Sigma to improve and control processes, ensuring alignment with agreed-upon strategy for pricing and sales • Create an organization that is successful at pricing Align different functions and levels of the company to achieve targeted profits
In Buying Military Transformation, Peter Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz analyze the United States military's ongoing effort to capitalize on information technology. New ideas about military doctrine derived from comparisons to Internet Age business practices can be implemented only if the military buys technologically innovative weapons systems. Buying Military Transformation examines how political and military leaders work with the defense industry to develop the small ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced communications equipment, and systems-of-systems integration that will enable the new military format. Dombrowski and Gholz's analysis integrates the political relationship between the defense industry and Congress, the bureaucratic relationship between the firms and the military services, and the technical capabilities of different types of businesses. Many government officials and analysts believe that only entrepreneurial start-up firms or leaders in commercial information technology markets can produce the new, network-oriented military equipment. But Dombrowski and Gholz find that the existing defense industry will be best able to lead military-technology development, even for equipment modeled on the civilian Internet. The U.S. government is already spending billions of dollars each year on its "military transformation" program-money that could be easily misdirected and wasted if policymakers spend it on the wrong projects or work with the wrong firms. In addition to this practical implication, Buying Military Transformation offers key lessons for the theory of "Revolutions in Military Affairs." A series of military analysts have argued that major social and economic changes, like the shift from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, inherently force related changes in the military. Buying Military Transformation undermines this technologically determinist claim: commercial innovation does not directly determine military innovation; instead, political leadership and military organizations choose the trajectory of defense investment. Militaries should invest in new technology in response to strategic threats and military leaders' professional judgments about the equipment needed to improve military effectiveness. Commercial technological progress by itself does not generate an imperative for military transformation. Clear, cogent, and engaging, Buying Military Transformation is essential reading for journalists, legislators, policymakers, and scholars.
Currently, available technologies can help make a supply chain resilient in volatile times whilst also keeping it responsible. Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains in an Era of Digital Transformation focuses on the linkages between digital technologies and environmental sustainability research and outlines synergies for more resilient, efficient and transparent supply chain management practices.