Quality Management in Supply Chain: Strategies for Achieving Efficiency and Responsiveness

Theoretical Overview of Quality Management Strategies in Supply Chain Management

The report assigned topic is "Quality management in supply chain". Each group will investigate, and report in class how companies can leverage this resource or capability in their supply chains to gain competitive advantage. Your task is to understand how companies can make use of the resource, capability or function under investigation in supply chain management to support their supply chain strategies and to achieve their set objective, i.e., efficiency or responsiveness or a combination of both.

To support your arguments, you need to provide in-depth analysis of at least one real-world company, which is successful in making use of the resource, capability or function in its supply chain management to excel, as evidence.

For example, if a group has been assigned to look at how information systems and technology can improve supply chain performance of a firm hence giving it a competitive advantage in the trade or a leading position in the industry, students can consider the following:

1. Analyse from a theoretical perspective the following:

a. what information systems and technology are referring to in the supply chain domain (i.e., what is it all about);

b. what the latest development in information systems and technology in supply chain is (i.e., what is the state of the art);

c. what activities are involved in the function or how it is implemented or utilized in the supply chain (i.e., how does it work);

d. what value does this function add to products or services (i.e., why is it needed); and

e. how the function or its activities can help improve efficiency or responsiveness of a supply chain thereby giving it a competitive advantage (i.e., why is it important).

For this part, the analysis needs to be comprehensive and cover all possible areas of a supply chain that can benefit from the use of information systems and technology. Relevant references, e.g., sources of information, should be given to support the statements.

2. Use a relatively well-known real-world company (or few companies if deemed appropriate) to support the arguments made in (1) above. For instance, students can use Wal-Mart as an example to discuss in detail (with facts, statistics, summary tables, figures, and diagrams, etc. to aid the discussion) how the company made use of information systems and technology to give itself a competitive edge.

During the discussion, students can give a brief background of Wal-Mart prior to discussing how the company has leveraged information systems and technology earlier in its history of development to improve operational efficiency and visibility.

Latest Developments in Information Systems and Technology in Supply Chain Management

They can also elaborate on Wal-Mart’s insight and endeavour in investing in satellite network, data processing centre, barcode and RFID technologies, how these technologies are used in Wal-Mart’s supply chain, what the benefits are, and how these investments have significantly improved Wal-Mart’s efficiency and/or responsiveness thus giving the company a leading position in the trade.

3. Compare real-world practices (i.e., the activities undertaken by the example company) against theories (i.e., the theoretical discussion about the resource, capability or function under investigation) along the five aspects mentioned in (1) above during the video presentation and in the investigation report to make your arguments convincing.

In this regard, a summary table comparing the various theoretical benefits of the resource, capability or function under discussion against the actual practices in the example company should be shown. It should be noted that activities observed at the real-world example must aligned with those discussed in the theoretical analysis in order to enable a direct comparison.

In other words, the two parts – theoretical analysis (Part 1) and real-world example (Part 2) – must be linked. If Part 1 mentions the use of RFID to improve visibility while the Part 2 mentions the use or ERP for internal integration, the two discussions are disjoint and there is no linkage or articulation between them. As such, Part 2 cannot serve as evidence to support Part 1. in brief, Assignment 2 is a focused investigation of a particular aspect of the supply chain management illustrated with successful utilization of the resource or implementation of the function in question to gain competitive advantage by a real company (or companies) as example.

The whole idea is to link the theories, concepts, approaches, techniques you have learned from this course with the actual practices in the real world. Therefore, a very general and shallow description of the assigned topic or a flimsy illustrative example will NOT meet the expected standard of this assignment and can result in very low marks. Students should imagine themselves as a group of researchers investigating the topic from a theoretical viewpoint and trying to use real-world examples to support their arguments.

The investigation has to be in-depth and thorough (after all, it is only one aspect of a supply chain and therefore greater attention can be afforded). This assignment can be mainly a desktop research with most of the data and information sourced from the public domain or a full-fledge study with primary data collection (interviews and document review) from the example company if possible.

Activities Involved in Quality Management Function in the Supply Chain

As such, there is no fixed or so-called best approach to investigating the assigned topic. Students are encouraged to use lateral thinking during the analysis and feel free to present their findings in whatever way they deem appropriate (as long as it is logical, intriguing and convincing). Nevertheless, it is expected that the investigation report will be in-depth, professional, and interesting for the audience and the readers. the report will be assessed primarily from the following aspects: ?

Richness of information presented/reported; ?

Organization of presentation file/report; ?

Application of relevant theories, concepts, approaches, and techniques learned from the course; ? Depth of analysis; ?

Adequacy of evidence to support arguments and conclusions; ?

Appropriate example company used and relevant elaboration given; ? Presentation/Report writing skills; and ?

Efforts invested in the assignment. For a professional business report (must be in DOC or DOCX format), the following are usually included:

1. In addition to the Report Cover (a page that properly provides the course number and title, assignment number, title of the case, student number, student name, and submission date), the report should include the following:

(a) Executive Summary (Summarize the topic of the investigation, the findings – both the theoretical overview of the function and the actual practices of the case company, and the conclusions of the study in one page.)

(b) Table of Contents (List the sections and subsections with corresponding page numbers on a separate page.)

(c) List of Figures (List the figure numbers and captions with corresponding page numbers on a separate page whenever figures are used in the report. DO NOT include the figures per se.)

(d) List of Tables (List the table numbers and captions with corresponding page numbers on a separate page whenever tables are used in the report. DO NOT include the tables per se.)

(e) Overview of the Resource/Function under Investigation (Use your own words to give a brief overview of the assigned resource or function.)

(f) Objective (State the purpose of the case study.)

(g) Theoretical Analysis (Present an in-depth analysis of the resource or function from a theoretical perspective.)

(h) Real-World Example (Present the findings of the investigation of a real-world company to provide evidence to show how the company leverages the resource of function to gain its competitive advantage.)

(i) Discussion (Demonstrate using adequate evidence that the points discussed in

(j) can be witnessed in the company identified as an example. In this regard, comparison table (theories versus practices), figures, charts, etc., should be used as liberal as possible to aid the discussion.)

(k) Issues identified (Identify the issues encountered by the case company in leveraging the supply chain function and how these issues are resolved or overcome by the firm to achieve success.)

Use summary tables, charts, and figures where appropriate to aid your analysis and discussion. The figures and tables should be inserted in the sections and subsections immediately after they are mentioned instead of in the List of Figures and List of Tables. All references must be provided in strict Harvard style. The report should be 3,000-3,500 words in length. The assessment of the assignment will be based mainly on the comprehensiveness of the analysis, plausibility, and feasibility of the recommendations as presented in the report.