The As Is situation of the Talowah case study is mainly for the distinct challenges and issues, faced in their supply chain. The present COVID 19 pandemic situation has been responsible for creating new disruptions in the supply chain and these are needed to be eradicated on a top level priority. It is being observed, even before the COVID 19 pandemic, the organizational management was facing issues in reaching to their expectations of sales in 2018 and the organization was facing losses (Cohen and Lee 2020). Several range cookers were being returned to them for different reasons and they did not comprise of a system for managing the returns easily. Moreover, the management even did not get an opportunity for return on investment and the product line and product ranges could not be used for covering the costs.
However, it was noticed that sales were consistent in the entire year; however, there were major peaks in their sales in November and December within the United States of America, Europe and the United Kingdom. Such distinct variation in the demands could be handled after building up major stock at the respective distribution centers and in spite of facing issues in their supply chain; they did not face loss in the sales for the pandemic situation (Langley et al. 2020). The main issues of supply chain in Talowah are provided in the following paragraphs:
i) Although, the rest of the locations were properly, the organization identified a few challenges. In different factories, the factory manager would be responsible for the purchasing of every part, needed for making the products; however, in the UK headquarters, in which the R&D is situated; the respective purchasing clerk is responsible for providing any type of part, office supply and equipment. As a result, the parts utilized within the distinct prototypes in the United Kingdom are not from the similar suppliers (Min 2021). It has been responsible for creating drift within the quality of the products and Talowah is facing supply chain issues in their processes accordingly.
ii) Moreover, the organization comprises of only a few effective agreements of supply chain and as a result, the distinct production engineers would be making different decisions, on the basis of delivery time as well as costs (Dong and Kouvelis 2020).
iii) There is even a larger base of supply for most of the parts and several suppliers are trying to compete on price with one another.
iv) There had been a hostile relation within the supply base and the factories and the production engineers were also doubted to take bribes from their suppliers. Hence, Talowah also had the chance of corruption in their supply chain process.
v) It was also checked that the contract with the respective drive belt breaks continuously as soon as being assembled and the contract is being renewed with their supplier (Fonseca and Azevedo 2020). As a result, it was considered that the supply chain contract was not accurate and could be changed periodically for creating major issues in the business processes and operations.
vi) The next distinct and noteworthy issue or challenge that was being identified in the supply chain of Talowah was that there are a few concerns related to ethical practices on the suppliers. Every supplier should be ethical and effective for executing the processes and operations and hence an unethical operation can be vulnerable. The identified ethical issues for the suppliers were utilization of child labor and paying lower wages to the employees (Wieland 2021). It eventually created a major question on the supplier’s ethical activities and these are needed to be eradicated on a top level priority.
vii) For dealing with the global shortage in chip, the organizational management of Talowah took the decision to purchase their required chips from the old appliances and the retailer can easily consider undertaking reverse logistics in their business, by offering the end customers with a major disposal service of the old appliances. It could have been referred to as extremely vulnerable for the overall quality, total costs and brand image of Talowah and the customers might be dissatisfied (Kot, Haque and Baloch 2020).
The organizational management, including Bing Cheng has considered the ideology of long term partnerships with other organizations for the core purpose of improving quality. He had adopted this specific practice in Talowah; however it has been responsible for impacting on the overall profit margin of the products. Moreover, a few suppliers have also increased their costs accordingly and quality maintenance might be an issue for the organizational management (Esper 2021). The organizational management requires to consider a highly advanced recommendation for dealing with their issues and complexities and even focusing on the process to manage supply chain risk and disruption successfully.
Talowah can consider short term demand supply synchronization strategy for their business processes and operations related to supply chain. A proper and effective approach of synchronization is needed for ensuring that the organizational management is able to deal with the complexities and issues and a complete transparency would be maintained successfully. Moreover, this particular strategy can also be termed as responsible for improving customer service levels and even for cost saving efficiency accordingly (Ghadge, Wurtmann and Seuring 2020). There could also be a collaboration of the stakeholders and integrated demand planning as well as supply chain.
Supply chain synchronization and optimization would be effective enough for reducing the costs and decreasing inventories successfully as well as for driving up asset utilization by removing buffers and involving flexibility to avoid disruptions. The vulnerability of the supply chain relations would be checked for reducing the global shocks and bringing new aspects for supply chain management in the organization (Ishida 2020). The traditional linear supply chain model is being transformed into different networks of supply chain, in which the functional silos are being broken down and the business remains connected to the distinct supply chain network. It would be needed for enabling end to end visibility, agility, optimization and collaboration.
Moreover, Talowah can also enhance their inbound materials visibility for focusing on the changes and attributes accordingly. Inbound logistics is the significant method, by which the materials as well as other materials are being brought into a business and the procedure is extremely distinct for including different steps to order, receive, store, manage and even transport every incoming suppliers (Kot, Haque and Baloch 2020). As a result, the issue of corruption or supplier failure would be avoided in the organization. Inbound logistics emphasizes on the supply part of the supply demand process. Supply chain synchronization is the system of linked and collaborative data partners, in which the information gets collected, used and analyzed in real time.
Figure 1: Supply Chain Optimization
(Source: Omni SCI. 2022)
Each and every stakeholder in the critical path can gain appropriate visibility, streamline the main procedures, mitigate the risks and even identify every gap or weakness. The digitization of supply chain can be termed as specific for enabling the highly synchronized and integrated function that is needed to deal with every significant complexity and even fluctuations that are being experienced in the respective global supply chain network (Fonseca and Azevedo 2020). As a result, Talowah would be able to focus on the advantages like increasing revenue opportunities, lowering operational costs, improvement of flexibility and efficiency and even for better visibility and transparency.
As a result, it would be quite vital and significant for the organizational management of Talowah to focus on the overall synchronization of supply chain to ensure that there is a high chance of gaining better optimization and cost efficiency in the business processes and operations and even for reducing their existing issues and complexities in the supply chain network. The visibility of supply chain would also be increased and the management of Talowah would be able to focus on the changes that are needed for their future processes and operations.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, a conclusion can be drawn that the involvement of global supply chain management can bring out a few issues and these are needed to be managed properly. It is the distribution of products and services in the transnational organizational global network for the purpose of maximizing profit and minimizing waste. The main elements of international supply chain management are planning, sourcing raw materials, manufacturing, delivery and returns. Talowah has ensured that they are working on the research and development aspect for reducing the supply chain issues and also handling customer orders as well as shipments accordingly.
There are a few issues that are evident with the global supply chain management and these include lead times, major delays, proper management of data, risk exposure and distinct defects in the quality as well as barriers in the processes. The organizational management of Talowah should ensure that they are considering the recommendation for the purpose of improving the supply chain with appropriate tools and techniques. The above provided report has provided a brief discussion on the major supply chain issues that are being faced by Talowah in their supply chain and for the current COVID 19 pandemic situation.
References
Chu, C.Y., Park, K. and Kremer, G.E., 2020. A global supply chain risk management framework: An application of text-mining to identify region-specific supply chain risks. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 45, p.101053.
Cohen, M.A. and Lee, H.L., 2020. Designing the right global supply chain network. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(1), pp.15-24.
Dong, L. and Kouvelis, P., 2020. Impact of tariffs on global supply chain network configuration: models, predictions, and future research.
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(1), pp.25-35.
Esper, T.L., 2021. Supply chain management amid the coronavirus pandemic. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 40(1), pp.101-102.
Fonseca, L.M. and Azevedo, A.L., 2020. COVID-19: outcomes for global supply chains. Management & Marketing. Challenges for the Knowledge Society, 15(s1), pp.424-438.
Ghadge, A., Wurtmann, H. and Seuring, S., 2020. Managing climate change risks in global supply chains: a review and research agenda. International Journal of Production Research, 58(1), pp.44-64.
Ishida, S., 2020. Perspectives on supply chain management in a pandemic and the post-COVID-19 era. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 48(3), pp.146-152.
Kot, S., Haque, A.U. and Baloch, A., 2020. Supply chain management in SMEs: Global perspective. Montenegrin Journal of Economics, 16(1), pp.87-104.
Langley, C.J., Novack, R.A., Gibson, B. and Coyle, J.J., 2020. Supply chain management: a logistics perspective. Cengage Learning.
Min, H., 2021. An inter-organisational decision support system for global supply chain management. International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 38(4), pp.475-487.
Omni SCI. 2022. [online]. Accessed from https://www.omnisci.com/technical-glossary/supply-chain-optimization [Accessed on 28th February 2022].
Sanders, N.R., 2020. Supply chain management: A global perspective. John Wiley & Sons.
Thürer, M., Tomaševi?, I., Stevenson, M., Blome, C., Melnyk, S., Chan, H.K. and Huang, G.Q., 2020. A systematic review of China’s belt and road initiative: Implications for global supply chain management. International Journal of Production Research, 58(8), pp.2436-2453.
Wieland, A., 2021. Dancing the supply chain: Toward transformative supply chain management. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 57(1), pp.58-73.
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