Robert Opdyke

Professor Jahnke
OPRE 3310
28 November 2016
Prompt 1
The most effective supply chains are always evolving and shifting in order to provide better services and
quality, and keep inventories consistent and constant. To that end there are many trends in supply chain management.
According to SupplyChain247.com some of these trends are service chains will become more important that product
chains, and micro segmentation will be key to success. According to Cerasis.com another current trend in supply chain
management is that of agile, a new form of lean operation.
With the continuing growth of our society we are always sending manufacturing overseas and buying the end
result of that offshored process. As a result we have become a consumer culture where many of the things we purchase
are physical products that have services attached. To that end consumers are beginning to demand more and better
services. Therefore companies and stores are having to improve things like their product knowledge, in-store services,
and responsive customer services. Take for example Apples CEO Tim Cook having to apologize to the consumers in
China. The people who had bought the iPhone 4 felt slighted because of the way communication broke down about the
warranty and repair services. Customers felt that Apple had ignored the Three Gurantees (replacement, repurchase,
repair), Chinas version of the Lemon Law. It isnt that Apple was ignoring the consumers or the law. It was a simple
miscommunication error. Service oriented supply chains rely heavily on the communication between consumer and
producer. The rule for any company is that service plus product (in this case, repair and warranty practices) trumps
product only. (Sengupta)
Micro segments are becoming increasingly important as the consumer base continues to grow. Micro segments
are the individual customers or the customer segments. Explicitly defined as that exact part of the general buying
category that triggers the purchasing decisionnot the category itself.(Sengupta) Going back to a focus on services,
companies are beginning to find that there are large numbers of customers that are not paid enough attention. There are
needs that havent been met and profits that have gone unnoticed. If companies were to focus on these smaller
components the customer base would grow, but it would also allow for better sales. If your planning is more focused on
the smaller parts first then it could build up further into the larger segments and the supply chain would continue to
become more efficient because there would be less waste due to the focus on smaller groups first.
One of the things that supply chain managers are always trying to focus on is the lean supply chain which
strives to eliminate waste, and improve the supply chain. However there is another line of thinking that is becoming a
bit more prevalent called Agile. Agile allows followers to better react to uncertainty by focusing on smaller
incremental, iterative work cadences, called sprints. This is an alternative to traditional sequential development.
While it is mostly used in software development, it can be applied to the normal supply chain in that it focuses on
breaking down each action into a smaller more dynamic unit in order to better observe each piece of the chain. In this
way it also helps change any of the individual parts of the process that may have a problem and get it going again
which keeps the down time low. The major benefit of this system is that there are short cycles of development followed
by a period of review in order to fix whatever went wrong at that point.
Effectively Project management is becoming more segment oriented. Focusing not only on just the overall
supply chain, but the smaller individual components too. As we continue to grow as a species there will be more focus
put on the individual and meeting their needs in order to ensure a better profit for the company. The improvement of
the programs will become more frequent in order to facilitate the continuing system as a whole.
Robert Opdyke
Prompt 3
In project management there are a few considerations to make when deciding on how to proceed with the
endeavor. According to the book these are Deciding which projects to implement, Selecting the project manager,
Selecting the project team, Planning and designing the project, Managing and controlling project resources, and
Deciding if and when a project should be terminated. Overall the idea is proper resource and time management in order
to meet specific constraints.
Deciding which projects to implement is where one must determine the criteria that potential projects must meet
and whether they meet them in order for the company to pursue. Take for example the case of Target moving into
Canada in 2013. The executives saw that in the north many Canadian families were coming across the border to shop at
the Target stores because of the good product selection and low prices. They decided that building new locations
further north would provide better revenue possibilities. They moved into the spaces left by Zellers, an ailing retailer.
The problem with all this was that when the locations opened their prices were similar to those of the other retailers
already in Canada, and the product selection was not what the customers anticipated. According to the Catalogue of
Catastrophe the reasons this endeavor failed was that they failed to meet consumer expectations with their pricing. If
they had done their research Target would have understood their new market better. They also had many quality issues
because their supply chain failed to keep the shelves stocked with the goods that people wanted most. Total losses
from their Canadian adventure are said to be in the order of $7billion.(Calleam) Ultimately what happened is that
Target expanded more quickly than they could handle and failed to provide the same level of service quality that the
Canadian customers had become used to in the US stores. They should have approached much slower to feel out the
market. This would have allowed Target to better understand and adjust what products they reordered when and in
what quantity. If they had grown slowly and adjusted their product lines accordingly they might have succeeded.
Planning and designing the project is also highly important, especially when the scope of the project is the size
of an entire city. In 2003 the city of Edinburgh planned and instituted a new public transportation project in the form of
a railway. It was initially designed to reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions, and to help meet the projected
demand for public transportation in the next decade. The problem is that after construction had begun there were delays
and cost overruns. Contractors began having disputes and the design of the project started changing and costs continued
to balloon out of control. Eventually the city government stepped in and reduced the size of the planned railway to just
14 km of the intended route. Reports indicate that only a third of the original plan was built.(Calleam) The cost went
from a projected 375 million to a much larger 1 billion. For reference this is roughly 71.4 million/km compared to
the average 22.7 million/km in other cities to the north. What happened here is that during the planning stages of the
project they underestimated the complexity of the project. There was a significant lack of management established and
there were little to no quality controls which led to a need for constant revisions and updates to the plan. They should
have based the initial model of the tram on other successful projects of a similar scale. They also could have probably
hired the same groups to do the work.
From what I can tell both of these projects failed because of lack of proper planning. Target failed to do proper
market research and ultimately failed to understand their consumer base. Their supply chain failed to keep the shelves
stocked and their prices were not as low as what the Canadians were expecting based on the US stores. The Edinburgh
railway failed because the city council allowed the project to get out of hand too quickly. The price kept increasing and
the size of the project kept shrinking. Both of these endeavors would have benefitted from better forward planning and
much stricter oversight from the people in charge. If there were better controls put in place and more structure during
the planning stages the Target stores would have been able to keep their inventory at a proper level and the Edinburgh
city would have had a better railway in much less time at a much lower cost.
Sources:
(Prompt 1)
Sengupta, Sumantra. "10 Supply Chain Trends for the Next 10 Years." 10 Supply Chain Trends for the Next 10 Years -
Supply Chain 24/7. SupplyChain247, 9 July 2013. Web. 03 Dec. 2016.
<http://www.supplychain247.com/article/10_supply_chain_trends_for_the_next_10_years>.
"What China's Lemon Law Will Mean For Manufacturers - Law360." Law360. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2016.
<http://www.law360.com/articles/479161/what-china-s-lemon-law-will-mean-for-manufacturers>.

(Prompt 3)
Admin, Calleam. "Target Canada." Why Do Projects Fail. International Project Leadership Academy, 18 Mar. 2014. Web. 03
Dec. 2016. <http://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=7467>.
Admin, Calleam. "Tram Trouble." Why Do Projects Fail. International Project Leadership Academy, 3 Dec. 2014. Web. 03
Dec. 2016. <http://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=7677>.

https://hbr.org/2009/02/which-initiatives-should-you-i
http://www.cio.com/article/2433916/project-management/six-attributes-of-successful-project-managers.html
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/decisionmaking-strategies-plan-implementation-36523.html