Chapter 7 E-Supply Chains, Collaborative Commerce, and Corporate Portals Class Exercises

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Chapter 7E-Supply Chains, Collaborative
Commerce, and Corporate PortalsClass Exercises
Jason Chou-Hong Chen, Ph.D. Professor of
MIS Graduate School of Business, Gonzaga
University Spokane, WA 99223 USA chen_at_jepson.gonza
ga.edu
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Application Case 7.1 Nikes Supply Chain
Failure and Eventual Success (p.315)

• 1. What developments led to Nikes supply chain
  being such a challenge to manage?
• As demand and complexity grew, the existing
  supply chain management practices began to break
  down.
• 2. What factors led to the i2 Technologies
  implementation being a highly complex project?
  Were the increased complexities really necessary?
• The project attempted to predict sales of a huge
  number of products using a large variety of
  inputs, some of which were not needed.

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Application Case 7.1 Nikes Supply Chain
Failure and Eventual Success (p.315-cont.)

• 3. What was wrong with Nike relying heavily on
  automatic statistical forecasts generated by the
  i2 Technologies software?
• Because the system relied on data, if the quality
  of the initial data was poor or ambiguous, the
  results were incorrect.

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Application Case 7.6 Poste Italiane Gains
Efficiency and Compliance Through Implementing
Workflow Systems (p.346)

• 1. Briefly describe the major problems faced by
  Italian Post.
• The firm needed to distribute a variety of
  important documents throughout the organization
  easily while being able to track them and ensure
  security.
• 2. What was nature of the solution provided by
  document management and workflow management
  systems?
• The system allows employees to access a central
  portal to view, edit and approve documents.

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Application Case 7.6 Poste Italiane Gains
Efficiency and Compliance Through Implementing
Workflow Systems (p.346-cont.)

• 3. Draw the Italian Post process of document
  creation, dissemination, and storage outlined at
  the start of this case. Draw the same process
  following the introduction of the new
  technologies. Where are efficiencies being
  achieved?
• Depictions will vary.
• 4. Explain how the system has improved workflow.
• Time and uncertainty in delivery materials is
  greatly reduced.
• 5. In what ways do the new systems improve
  collaboration among the distributed postal
  offices?
• GREATER VISIBILITY OF THE PROCESS AND ITS RESULTS
  ALLOW FOR BETTER COMMUNICATIONS.

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Discussion Board Questions

• 7. Discuss the proposition that competition in
  contemporary business is best described and
  conceptualized as competition between industry
  supply chains, rather than between individual
  corporations.
• It can be argued that companies are now more
  dependant on their value chains than in the past
  and that competition is now a function of a
  company and its value chain partners. (e.g.,
  Wal-Mart is a SCM company and a manufacturing
  company).

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• 5. Compare and contrast a commercial portal (such
  as Yahoo) with a corporate portal.
• Both Web sites provide a variety of information
  and a variety of types of potential learning and
  interaction. An Internet portal such as Yahoo!
  is horizontal, providing a variety of different
  types of information about various topics. A
  corporate portal is vertical, providing
  information only about the company.

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• 13. Explain the need for groupware as a
  facilitator of collaboration.
• Groupware allows different groups and individuals
  to freely collaborate and communicate. This is
  the function groupware is designed for, and it
  simplifies the process and generally adds to the
  richness of the communication.

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Internet Exercise

• 7. Enter i2.com and review its products. Explain
  how some of the products facilitate
  collaboration.
• This firm offers software products to assist in
  supply chain collaboration in the following
  areas
• Fulfillment Optimization
• Logistics Optimization
• Production Optimization
• Revenue and Profit Optimization
• Spend Optimization

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Real-World Case SYSCO Excellence in SCM thru
BPI and IT (p.358)

• 1. What was the purpose of SYSCOs ChefEx
  system? What were the benefits of this system?
• The system allowed the firm to add a large
  variety of gourmet foods to its product offering.
  These offering allowed chefs to increase the
  number and variety of their offerings, which
  increased orders for SYSCO.
• 2. What was the objective of SYSCOs RFID
  system? What were the benefits of this system?
• The objective was to better track refrigerated
  foods, this lead to better quality and less
  spoilage.