Supply Chain Management
By combining software, sensors, and location technologies, devices that can operate themselves to perform specific functions are called ____________ devices.
autonomous
When designing a sourcing strategy, it is important for a firm to:
be clear on the factors that have the greatest influence on performance and target improvement on those areas.
The measure of whether a forecast method consistently over- or underestimates demand is:
bias
The ____________ measures how much a market segment likes the design of each brand on a scale from 0 to 100.
brand judgement
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been assessing global warming since 1990. This UN panel has determined that even though most of the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has come from the United States and Western Europe, it is poorer countries closer to the equator that are likely to face the biggest risk of:
All of the above (drought; disrupted water supplies; swelling of oceans due to melting ice sheets)
Why has same-day delivery of pizza been successful, whereas the practice has failed in other settings?
All of the above (temporal aggregation of orders; many delivery locations close to the customer; relatively low variety of ingredients held in inventory)
A strategic information system is one that attempts to do which of the following:
One or more of the above
The strategy where workforce (capacity) is kept stable but the number of hours worked is varied over time in an effort to synchronize production with demand is the:
flexibility strategy
A poor/inappropriate distribution network can:
hurt the level of service customers receive while increasing cost and have a significant negative impact on the profitability of a firm.
Which capacity determines how many workers you need to hire?
Operating capacity
The factors driving an increased focus on sustainability can be divided into three distinct categories. Which of the following is not one of these categories?
Optimizing the use of natural resources based on their market price.
As a reseller, before you start making tactical decisions in marketing, you will need to analyze the initial ____________.
market research data
Efficient supply chains:
maximize performance at a minimum cost.
The measure of forecast error where the absolute amount of error of each forecast is averaged is:
mean absolute deviation (MAD)
Any observed demand can be broken down into two components. Observed demand (O) =
systematic component (S) + random component (R).
The simple exponential smoothing forecast method is used when:
systematic component (S)= level
The level of overbooking is based on the trade-off between:
the cost of wasted capacity due to cancellations or a capacity shortage due to over-commitment.
Which of the following is not an example of information system hardware?
A company's product development strategy defines the set of customer needs that it seeks to satisfy through its products and services.
False
A decrease in the desired response time decreases the number of facilities required in the distribution network.
False
A good aggregate plan will result in a large amount of excess inventory and capacity, thereby raising costs.
False
As the number of facilities in a supply chain increases, the required inventory decreases.
False
Data—a collection of facts—is synonymous with information and knowledge.
False
Revenue management is the use of marketing to increase the profit generated from a limited availability of supply chain assets.
False
Short-term production serves as a broad blueprint for operations and establishes the parameters within which aggregate planning decisions are made.
False
Supply chain efficiency is directly related to the cost of making and delivering a product to the customer. Decreases in cost lower efficiency.
False
Supply chain strategy is an explicit specification of the logistics strategy and therefore should not include supplier strategy or operations strategy.
False
Tactics are policies or guidelines your firm needs to stick to in order to follow your strategy.
False
The forecasting function is:
the foundation of any revenue management system.
When a single stage controls replenishment decisions for the entire chain (e.g., continuous replenishment programs or vendor managed inventory), coordination is achieved because:
the problem of multiple forecasts is eliminated
The planning horizon is:
the time period over which the aggregate plan is to produce a solution
Aggregate planning, to be effective, requires inputs from:
throughout the supply chain
Forecasting methods that use historical demand to arrive at a forecast are known as:
time series forecasting methods
Temporal aggregation of demand results in an increase of transportation costs because it entails smaller shipments and increases the variation in shipment sizes from one shipment to the next. It does not hurt customer response time.
False
The carrier is the party that requires the movement of the product between two points in the supply chain. The shipper is the party that moves or transports the product.
False
The first microcomputer was the IBM PC.
False
The high-utilization facility will have little difficulty responding to demand fluctuations.
False
To retain strategic fit, supply chain strategy must not be adjusted over the life cycle of a product and as the competitive landscape changes.
False
Tuckman's Group Development Model describes six stages that a team will go through in its sequence of decision making.
False
You should perform a process improvement study to figure out where you are and to discover different routes to your strategic objectives.
False
Which capacity is determined by the size of your manufacturing plant?
Fixed capacity
Firms must evaluate the risks when they move any function to a third party. Which of the following is not a risk to the firm?
Gain of supply chain visibility
Which of the following is a not a support activity in a value chain?
Human Resources Management
What difference in the retail environment may justify the fact that the fast-moving consumer goods supply chain in India has far more distributors than in the United States?
The sheer volume of small store owners in India requires a large number of distributors to service them.
Which of the following is not a stage in Tuckman's Group Development Model?
Learning
From the late 1950s through the 1960s into the 1970s, computers were seen as a way to more efficiently do calculations. This was known as the:
Mainframe Era
What type of distribution network is better suited to highly differentiated products?
Manufacturer storage with direct shipping (drop-shipping).
The presence of lead paint in some of its most popular toys forced this company to recall hundreds of thousands of toys sold between April and July of 2007:
Mattel
Which of the following is not a financial asset recorded on the balance sheet?
Net income
__________ is a cost factor performance characteristic of Retail Storage with Customer Pickup that is lower than all other distribution network options.
Transportation
Firms can significantly reduce safety inventory they require by physically aggregating inventories in one location. _________________, however, generally increases when inventory is aggregated.
Transportation cost
Which of the following is a disadvantage of distributor storage with last mile delivery?
Transportation cost is higher than any other distribution option.
What trade-offs do managers need to consider when making transportation decisions?
Transportation cost versus inventory cost and transportation cost versus customer responsiveness.
A firm gains the most by outsourcing to a third party if its needs are small, highly uncertain, and shared by other firms sourcing from the same third party.
True
A milk run is a route on which a truck either delivers product from a single supplier to multiple retailers or goes from multiple suppliers to a single buyer location.
True
A planning horizon is usually between three and eighteen months for an aggregate plan.
True
A third party may be able to provide a sustainable growth of surplus by aggregating to a higher level than the firm itself. The growth in surplus comes from aggregating capacity, inventory, inbound/outbound transportation, warehousing, procurement, information, receivables, or relationships to a level that the firm cannot achieve on its own.
True
Agile intercompany scope refers to a firm's ability to achieve strategic fit when partnering with supply chain stages that change over time.
True
At the highest level, performance of a distribution network should be evaluated along two dimensions: (1) Value provided to the customer. (2) Cost of meeting customer needs.
True
Considering the supply chain driver Inventory, significant waste in any supply chain occurs when a product is thrown into a landfill because both materials and energy used to produce the product are now lost forever.
True
Inbound transportation costs are the costs incurred in bringing material into a facility. Outbound transportation costs are the costs of sending material out of a facility.
True
The goal of aggregate planning is to satisfy demand in a way that maximizes profit.
True
The maximum inventory parameter lets the plant manager know the upper limit on the number of units to leave on the shelf at the end of the quarter.
True
The term greenwashing is often used to refer to products and practices that seem green but fundamentally aim to grow profits.
True
The value chain illustrates the close relationship between all the functional strategies within a company.
True
For the quantities shipped and the distances involved, _________ transport is by far the cheapest mode of transportation.
water
Much less success for sustainability initiatives has been driven by:
attracting customers who value sustainability.
For supplier selection in general, ___________ are best used when the quantifiable acquisition cost is the primary component of total cost.
auctions
A market mechanism to coerce all participants to behave in a way that helps the common good is:
cap-and-trade and emission tax.
The cost of maintaining the plant and paying the workers while your production line is idle is called ____________ cost.
excess capacity
As a supplier, the greater the variety of your brands, the ____________ to make production line changeovers.
greater the cost and time
A surf shop has experienced weekly demand for surfboard wax of D1 = 4, D2 = 5, D3 = 8, and D4 = 5 units over the last four weeks. Forecast demand for Week 5 using a three-week moving average.
6.00
Walmart has seen this benefit to its bottom line due to its sustainability efforts:
All of the above (reduced energy costs due to more efficient LED lighting in stores, reduced energy costs due to skylights in stores, reduced material costs due to reducing packaging; reduced transportation costs due to reducing packaging)
Hardin (1968) described the tragedy of the commons as a dilemma arising when the common good aligns perfectly with the good of individual entities.
False
Quantitative forecasting methods are primarily subjective and rely on human judgment.
False
There are five major obstacles listed in the text to coordination in a supply chain. Which of the following is not one of these major obstacles?
Quality obstacles
Forecasts should include both the expected value of the forecast and a measure of forecast error.
True
Hardin (1968) introduced the idea of "mutual coercion" whereby social arrangements or mechanisms coerce all participants to behave in a way that helps the common good.
True
Heileman (1997) provided a simple but greatly useful recoverable materials flowchart (i.e., closed-loop supply chain) to help distinguish the concepts of repair, remanufacture, and recycle.
True
If a firm has high responsiveness to customer orders, this will result in higher transportation costs than if the firm decreased its responsiveness.
True
If you produce too many units, you risk having unsold inventory that will tie up money and possibly lead to cash shortages.
True
Information processing obstacles refer to situations where demand information is distorted as it moves between different stages of the supply chain, leading to increased variability in orders within the supply chain.
True
Sourcing is the entire set of business processes required to purchase goods and services.
True
The UN introduced a framework identifying economic, environmental, and social sustainability as the "three pillars" of sustainable development.
True
The aggregate planner must make a trade-off between capacity, inventory, and backlog costs.
True
The bullwhip effect is the increasing fluctuation in orders as they move up the supply chain.
True
Two key decisions need to be made when designing a distribution network: (1) Will product be delivered to the customer location or picked up from a prearranged site? (2) Will product flow through an intermediary (or intermediate location)?
True
Disaggregate forecasts are usually more accurate than aggregate forecasts.
False
Distribution does not occur between every pair of stages in the supply chain.
False
Faster transportation modes are usually less expensive than slower transportation modes, and allow a supply chain to be more efficient.
False
For pull processes, a forecast is not necessary because customer demand will have materialized.
False
Forecasting errors are dealt with in aggregate plans using safety demand.
False
Forecasts are always accurate.
False
Direct materials are:
components used to make finished goods
Which of the following is not a distinct aggregate planning strategy for achieving balance between capacity, inventory, and backlog costs?
Adjustable strategy
Tailored transportation is the use of different transportation networks and modes based on:
All of the above (Customer density and distance from warehouse; customer size; product demand and value)
Which of the following is an example of a collaborative system?
All of the above (Google Drive; Microsoft Sharepoint; Cisco Webex; IBM Lotus Notes)
Which transportation network design option has the storing of product at an intermediate location between supplier and buyer locations?
All shipments via central DC
Which of the following is a form of safety inventory?
Build and carry extra inventories
When either the supply of raw materials or the demand for the finished product is highly variable, forecasting and the accompanying managerial decisions:
are very difficult
The trucking industry consists of two major segments—truckload (TL) and less than truckload (LTL). The challenge in the TL business is that most markets have:
an imbalance of inbound and outbound flows
Successful revenue management requires:
a proper understanding of customer preferences and a quantification of the impact of various tactics on consumer behavior.
Another useful metric is the ______________________, which roughly measures the average amount of time from when cash enters the process as cost to when it returns as collected revenue.
cash-to-cash (C2C) cycle
The basic trade-off to be considered by the supplier with production capacity is between:
committing to an order from a lower-price buyer or waiting for a high-price buyer to arrive later on.
Pro forma accounting statements will reflect all of your expenses and projected revenues during the ____________ quarter.
current
The uncertainty of customer demand for a product is the:
demand uncertainty
The scope of strategic fit refers to the functions and stages within a supply chain that coordinate strategy and target a common goal. When the scope is narrow, individual functions try to:
optimize performance based on their own goals.
Online sales increase ___________________ when compared to the performance of traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores.
outbound transportation costs
For push processes, a manager must forecast what customer demand will be in order to:
plan the level of production and transportation
A firm can increase ______________________ by growing the profit margin and/or increasing the asset turnover.
return on assets (ROA)
The Old Guys Rule Surfboard Production (OGRSP) Co. produces on average 5 surfboards per day, which are delivered to surf shops all over the world. It usually takes 10 days to produce a surfboard from raw material to finished good. Little's Law tells us that I = DT where: I = inventory; D = throughput (or demand); and T = flow time. How much inventory does OGRSP Co. hold?
50 Surfboards
Which of the following is a tactical decision made by a supplier?
All of the above (Expand your factor; Invest in the manufacturing information system to streamline your distribution; Perform studies to identify and address quality issues; take actions to better serve your resellers)
To successfully use revenue management when serving multiple customer segments, a firm must use which of the following tactics effectively?
All of the above (Price based on the value assigned by each segment; Use different prices for each segment; Forecast at the segment level)
The competitive strategy is defined based on how the customer prioritizes:
All of the above (Product cost, Delivery time, Variety, Quality)
Which of the following is a component of an information system?
All of the above (Software; Data; People; Process)
Which of the following is a form of safety capacity?
All of the above (Use overtime; Carry extra workforce permanently; Use subcontractors; Purchase capacity from an open or spot market)
The bullwhip effect causes:
All of the above (a loss of supply; chain coordination; distortion of demand information within the supply chain; different stages of the supply chain to have a very different estimates of what demand looks like)
To improve overall profits, the supplier must share risk in a way that encourages the buyer to purchase more and increase the level of product availability. This requires the supplier to share in some of the buyer's demand uncertainty. What is an approach to risk sharing between the supplier and the buyer?
All of the above (buybacks or returns; revenue sharing; quantity flexibility)
The lack of coordination hurts both responsiveness and cost in a supply chain by making it more expensive to provide a given level of product availability. The impact of the lack of coordination includes:
All of the above (manufacturing cost; inventory cost; transportation cost; replenishment lead time)
When using pricing and revenue management in practice, a firm should:
All of the above (quantify the benefits of revenue management; implement a forecasting process; keep it simple; understand and inform the customer)
Rationing schemes that allocate limited production in proportion to the orders placed by retailers:
All of the above (result in a game in which retailers try to increase the size of their orders to increase the amount supplied to them; lead to a magnification of the bullwhip effect; lead to the manufacturer being left with a surplus of product and capacity)
An important factor that affects the increase in supply chain surplus that a third party provides is:
All of the above (scale; uncertainty; specificity of assets)
It is important to focus on total cost of ownership (TCO) when selecting a supplier. What does TCO include?
All of the above (supplier price; delivery costs; enviromental costs)
Seven-Eleven's supply chain strategy in Japan can be described as attempting to micro-match supply and demand using rapid replenishment. What has Seven-Eleven Japan done to develop capabilities that support its supply chain strategy?
All of the above. (Their facility location choices are to saturate an area with stores, thereby making it easy for customers to shop and their own delivery trucks to move from store to store to replenish inventory; Their inventory system is run on an information system that transmits directly to the supplier and distribution center; goods are produced using a pull system to replace what has been sold during that delivery period; Their transportation system is flexible to maximize responsiveness while also achieving efficiency; Their suppliers are required to deliver to a distribution center where products are sorted by temperature.)
Which of the following is not a benefit of effective sourcing decisions?
Better economies of scale can be achieved if orders within a firm are disaggregated
The two forms of supply chain assets are:
Capacity and inventory
A customer always wants the highest level of performance along all dimensions of customer service, including response time, product variety, product availability, customer experience, order visibility, and returnability.
False
A planner must build a rough master production schedule (MPS) first, in order to prepare an aggregate plan.
False
A process is an unplanned series of steps undertaken without a desired outcome or goal.
False
Even in the post-PC world, PCs will continue to be the primary way that people interact and do business.
False
If the assets required are specific to a firm and cannot be used by others, outsourcing to a third party is likely to increase the supply chain surplus.
False
In reality, the dynamic pricing problem is not complicated because demand is predictable and customers do not behave strategically.
False
Incentives that focus only on the local impact of an action result in decisions that maximize total supply chain profits.
False
Intermodal traffic has declined considerably with the decreased use of containers for shipping and the rise of global trade. Containers are difficult to transfer from one mode to another.
False
Long-term forecasts are usually more accurate than short-term forecasts.
False
Lot size based quantity discounts reduce the bullwhip effect within the supply chain.
False
Qualitative forecasting methods assume that the demand forecast is highly correlated with certain factors in the environment (e.g. state of the economy, interest rates).
False
Suppliers will focus on the marketing and distribution of microcomputers in a business to business (B2B) environment.
False
The Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management simulation is set for 6 quarters or decision rounds.
False
The Internet was invented after the personal computer (PC) era (mid-1980s) of business computing.
False
The Mumbai dabbawalas use a direct shipment network in order to pick up and deliver lunches every workday.
False
The bullwhip effect enables different stages of the supply chain to have a consistent estimate of what demand looks like.
False
The overall impact of the Internet has been a pronounced increase in average industry profitability.
False
The sharing of information can help a supply chain meet customer needs at lower cost, therefore sharing more information across a supply chain is always better than sharing the minimum information required.
False
The use of risk sharing between supply chain partners will result in locally optimal decisions that decrease the total supply chain profits.
False
There are two important measures which are explicitly part of a firm's financial statements: markdowns and lost sales.
False
Time series forecasting methods are based on the assumption that past demand history is a poor indicator of future demand and are most appropriate when little historical data are available.
False
To differentiate between various customer segments, the firm should remove barriers which identify product or service attributes that the segments value differently.
False
Transportation entails moving customers from point to point in the supply chain. Transportation choices have a small impact on supply chain responsiveness and efficiency.
False
Transportation plays a key role in every supply chain because products are usually produced and consumed in the same location.
False
Walmart started its focus on sustainability in order to attract customers that value sustainability.
False
With an uncoordinated supply chain, each stage tries to maximize its own profits, resulting in actions that often increase total supply chain surplus.
False
Which of the following is an example of application software?
Microsoft Excel
If a company carries no debt, what can be determined about return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA)?
ROE=ROA
The primary value proposition of __________ was to deliver content in the form of a recently released DVD very close to the customer. __________ offered customers a cheap and easy way to rent movies through its vending machines that were located in high-trafficked locations such as fast food restaurants and supermarkets.
Redbox
What type of distribution network is typically well suited for commodity items?
Retail storage with customer pickup.
Which of the following are issues that must be dealt with in order for differential pricing to be effective?
The firm must differentiate between the market segments and structure its pricing to make one segment pay more than the other and must control demand such that the lower paying segment does not utilize the entire availability of the asset.
A United Nations (UN) commission defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
True
A company is said to have competitive advantage over its rivals when it is able to sustain profits that exceed industry average.
True
A group of venture capitalists will invest $4 million in the first quarter and then another $2 million in the second quarter for all the expenses related to starting up your company.
True
Aggregate planning is a process by which a company determines levels of capacity, production, subcontracting, inventory, stockouts, and even pricing over a specified time horizon.
True
Dynamic pricing is the tactic of varying price over time. The success of dynamic pricing also requires the presence of different customer segments, with some willing to pay a higher price for the product.
True
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the computer-to-computer exchange of business documents in a standard electronic format between business partners.
True
Every product and every unit of capacity can be sold both in bulk and in the spot market. Revenue management increases profits by finding the right portfolio of long-term and spot-market customers.
True
Faced with seasonal peaks, an effective revenue management tactic is to charge a higher price during the peak period and a lower price during off-peak periods.
True
Firms must consider a tailored sourcing strategy that couples responsive onshore or near-shore sources with low-cost offshore sources. The responsive onshore/near-shore sources should focus on high-value products with high demand volatility, whereas the low-cost offshore sources should focus on the lower-value, high-volume products.
True
Firms must decide whether production facilities will be flexible (more responsive, many types of products) or dedicated (more efficient, limited number of products).
True
For firms to focus on sustainability, it is crucial that they internalize the "monetary value" of the social or environmental cost of their actions.
True
Information consists of data and analysis concerning facilities, inventory, transportation, costs, prices, and customers throughout the supply chain. Information is potentially the biggest driver of performance in the supply chain because it directly affects each of the other drivers.
True
Inventory aggregation decisions must account for inventory and transportation costs. Inventory aggregation decreases supply chain costs if the product has a high value-to-weight ratio, high demand uncertainty, low transportation cost, and customer orders are large.
True
Inventory exists in the supply chain because of a mismatch between supply and demand.
True
Inventory is an important supply chain driver because changing inventory policies can dramatically alter the supply chain's efficiency and responsiveness.
True
Managers can improve coordination within the supply chain by aligning goals and incentives such that every participant in supply chain activities works to maximize total supply chain profits.
True
Mature products with stable demand are usually the easiest to forecast.
True
Microsoft Windows is an example of an operating system.
True
Most revenue management strategies use differential pricing as a critical lever to maximize earnings.
True
Outbound transportation costs per unit tend to be higher than inbound costs, because inbound lot sizes are typically larger.
True
Outsourcing results in a supply chain function being performed by a third party.
True
Pricing obstacles refer to situations in which the pricing policies for a product lead to an increase in variability of orders placed.
True
Purchasing, also known as procurement, is the process used to acquire raw materials, components, products, services, or other resources from suppliers. Correct Answer True
True
Sharing the rewards from improvements can induce performance improvement from a supplier along dimensions, such as lead time, for which the benefit of improvement accrues primarily to the buyer but the effort for improvement comes primarily from the supplier.
True
Spoilage occurs when the capacity reserved for higher-price buyers is wasted because demand from the higher-price segment does not materialize. Spill occurs if higher-price buyers must be turned away because the capacity has already been committed to lower-price buyers.
True
Supplier performance should be compared based on the impact on total cost of ownership. In addition to acquisition costs, ownership and post-ownership costs should also be considered. In many instances, a higher acquisition cost is more than compensated for by lower ownership and post-ownership costs.
True
Supply chain coordination requires each stage of the supply chain to take into account the impact its actions have on other stages.
True
The degree of supply chain responsiveness should be consistent with the implied uncertainty. The goal is to target high responsiveness for a supply chain facing high implied uncertainty, and efficiency for a supply chain facing low implied uncertainty.
True
The first step in achieving strategic fit between competitive and supply chain strategies is to understand customers and supply chain uncertainty.
True
The following situation would likely not work well. A situation in which marketing is publicizing a company's ability to provide a large variety of products very quickly; simultaneously, distribution is targeting the lowest cost means of transportation.
True
The forecast of demand forms the basis for all supply chain planning decisions.
True
The major drivers of supply chain performance are facilities, inventory, transportation, information, sourcing, and pricing.
True
The manufacturer storage with direct shipping distribution network classification is also referred to as "drop-shipping."
True
The supply chain driver Facilities often offers an opportunity to simultaneously improve the environmental and financial performance through innovation.
True
The tactic of overbooking or overselling the available asset is suitable in any situation where customers are able to cancel orders and the value of the asset drops significantly after a deadline.
True
The use of the Internet is growing all over the world, and with it the use of digital devices.
True
There are three market segments that resellers will be able to serve in the PC market.
True
To achieve complete strategic fit, a firm must ensure that all functions in the value chain have consistent strategies that support the competitive strategy.
True
To create an aggregate plan, a company must specify the planning horizon for the plan and the duration of each period within the planning horizon.
True
To improve the quality of these aggregate plans, forecast errors must be taken into account when formulating aggregate plans.
True
Total logistics costs are the sum of facility, inventory, and transportation costs for a supply chain network.
True
Unused capacity from the past has no value.
True
When selecting a mode of transportation, managers must account for unit costs and cycle, safety, and in-transit inventory costs that result from using each mode. Modes with high transportation costs can be justified if they result in significantly lower inventory costs.
True
When transportation infrastructure is publicly owned, overuse and congestion result because the cost borne by a user is less than the user's marginal impact on total cost.
True
When units move out of the warehouse to your customers faster than they come in from your factory, you will experience stock-outs and unhappy customers.
True
You have a factory with a fixed capacity of 50 units per day. You can set your operating capacity to produce 3,000 units for the quarter (assume 65 workdays in a quarter).
True
A command-and-control approach to coerce all participants to behave in a way that helps the common good is:
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (take-back mandate) and automobile fuel efficiency standard.
The fact that each stage in a supply chain forecasts demand based on the stream of orders received from the downstream stage results in:
a magnification of fluctuations in demand as we move up the supply chain from the retailer to the manufacturer.
The main advantage of __________ forecasting is that estimates incorporate all new data that are observed.
adaptive
The operational parameter concerned with demand not satisfied in the period in which it arises, but carried over to future periods is:
backlog
The ____________ is the most important measure of your firm's total performance.
balanced scorecard
Every company and supply chain faces the challenge of the tragedy of the commons as it operates in a global environment. They must:
compete against others who may be extracting benefits from resource commons without spending to maintain these commons and compete in a market in which customers often value low cost and are not willing to pay for a more sustainable solution.
A company's supply chain strategy:
determines the nature of procurement and transportation of materials as well as manufacture and distribution of the product.
A fundamental aspect of successful collaboration is:
identification and resolution of exceptions
The uncertainty that exists due to the portion of demand that the supply chain is required to meet is the:
implied demand uncertainty.
As companies have outsourced supply chain activities, it has become harder to align the goals of all parties involved. Supply chain ____________ can have unintended consequences when the third party's information and actions are hard to observe.
incentives
Effective differential pricing over time will generally:
increase the level of product availability for the consumer willing to pay full price and also increase total profits for the retailer.
All raw materials, work in process, and finished goods within a supply chain are known as:
inventory
Holding __________ is one of the most common levers used in practice to deal with supply chain uncertainty.
inventory
The cost of holding inventory incurred by the shipper's supply chain network is:
inventory cost
In a 2003 Harvard Business Review article, Nicholas Carr argued that information technology:
is just a commodity and cannot be used to gain competitive advantage.
Temporal aggregation:
is the process of combining orders across time
Distribution is a key driver of the overall profitability of a firm because:
it directly impacts both the supply chain cost and the customer experience.
Less expensive modes of transport typically have:
longer lead times and larger minimum shipment quantities
A good forecasting method should:
predict the systematic component of demand and account for forecast errors
The process by which a firm decides how much to charge customers for its goods and services is:
pricing
Third parties increase the supply chain surplus if they either increase value for the customer or decrease the supply chain cost relative to the firm performing the task in-house. A third party may aggregate procurement for many small players and facilitate economies of scale in ordering, production, and inbound transportation. What mechanism is the third party using to grow the surplus?
procurement aggregation
The probability of having a product in stock when a customer order arrives is:
product availability
The operational parameter concerned with the number of units completed per unit time (such as per week or per month) is:
production rate
Most concrete action has been observed primarily when a focus on sustainability:
reduces risk and improves the financial performance of the supply chain.
Toyota has the end goal of opening a manufacturing facility in every major market that they enter. Toyota is using facilities to increase:
responsiveness
Inventory held to satisfy demand that is higher than forecasted is:
safety inventory
A decision support system (DSS) works best when the decision-maker is making a:
semi-structured decision
The main advantage of in-transit merge over drop-shipping is:
somewhat lower transportation cost and improved customer experience, because only a single delivery is made to the customer.
The set of business processes required to purchase goods and services is known as:
sourcing
A company's marketing and sales strategy:
specifies how the market will be segmented and how the product will be positioned, priced, and promoted.
Some have questioned whether Walmart's claims with regards to environmental responsibility are justified; pointing to the fact that Walmart's demand for lower prices from its suppliers has driven down the quality and durability of consumer goods. This has the effect of:
speeding up the flow of goods from factory to landfill.
A(n) ____________ is a plan or set of policies designed to take you to a specific goal.
strategy
One drawback of vendor managed inventory (VMI) arises because retailers often sell products from competing manufacturers that are ___________ in the customer's mind.
substitutes
Information distortion is exaggerated by the fact that:
supply chain today produce a large amount of product variety
When supplying multiple customer segments with a wide variety of products through several channels, a firm must __________ its supply chain to achieve strategic fit. This requires sharing operations for some links in the supply chain, while having separate operations for other links.
tailor
In practice an aggregate planner likely uses a combination of approaches which is referred to as the:
tailored or hybrid strategy
The amount of the asset reserved for the higher-price segment is such that:
the expected marginal revenue from the higher-price segment equals the price to the lower-price segment.