Unit 7: Discussion

Introduction

Last unit Kibby and Strand faced a quality issue right before the Christmas season and this got the attention of the CEO and senior leadership. The company has done well using its current models for forecasting supply of raw materials and demand for its products, but when marketing starting shortening delivery time to appease customers it created the circumstances that led to quality issues. The shorting of delivery times also impacted the flow of cotton and wool from your suppliers. There were days when the receiving department was getting overwhelmed with suppliers delivering cotton and wool, so much so that their trucks were stacked up waiting to unload and this prevented your own deliver trucks from getting to the loading dock to ship products to customers. Basically, shifting the delivery days up had a domino effect on receiving, production, and shipping.  Who would have though one small change in demand would result in all these issues?

Kibby and Strand poses the perfect scenario for a supply chain management analysis. Supply chains are the lifeblood of organizations like Kibby and Strand. The operations manager uses supply chain management to do the following:

1. Manage procurement of raw materials.
2. Manage suppliers.
3. Manage customer demand.
4. Determine if outsourcing is beneficial or needed.
5. Identify problem in the supply chain and respond quickly

In the scenario below you will be given the opportunity to apply supply chain management to help Kibby and Strand.

Unit Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate how to determine capacity of a critical asset. (CLO 2, 3, 4, and 5)
2. Evaluate the capacity of an organization based on forecasting and adjust planning, scheduling and capacity management to accommodate the forecast. (CLO 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7)
3. Develop an executable action plan designed to improve aggregated planning, scheduling, and capacity management in organizations. (CLO 6 and 7)
4. Consider the ethical implications associated with making operational and supply chain management decisions.  (CLO 5)

Directions

Accessing McGraw-Hill Connect

Follow these steps to view the scenario.

Initial Posting

Go to McGraw-Hill Practice Operations to view the scenario.

1. Click the “McGraw-Hill Connect” tab in the course navigation menu.
2. Click the McGraw-Hill Practice Operations link.

Refer back to Module 2, Managing Suppliers (Scenario) in Practice Operations. Based on their observations in this scenario, and upon a careful review of the available literature, the student is to consider him or herself to be the Operations Manager of Kibby and Strand, the company in the scenario, responsible for managing all three departments: receiving, production, and shipping.

Conduct an analysis of the way Kibby and Strand manages receiving, production, and shipping and prepare a Process Improvement Plan that can address the issues that occurred when marketing staring shortening delivery time to appease customer.  Also supply chain management plan to include a vendor comparison matrix to be used by the Receiving Department for evaluating suppliers of raw materials.  The criteria for comparing vendors needs to be research based and specific to Kibby and Strand.  Include a memo to the COO describing the matrix and how you recommend it be implemented.

The students are to create their plan based on knowledge learned in researching the topic, and post it in the discussion.

Instruction Guidance: It would be prudent to consider content covered in chapters 15 and 16 of the textbook; however, there are many other useful resources available on the Internet and in the literature to support the construction of your memo. 

The plan should be prepared as a Microsoft™ Word document, and then attached to the unit discussion thread. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared consistent with the APA writing style and reflect higher level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis and or evaluation).