Maguiwe, Loverson O.

CHAPTER 3

1. What is a supply chain? What is the purpose of the supply chain management?
- The activities performed from the purchase of raw material to the shipping of manufactured goods
and collecting for their sale. The coordination of purchasing, manufacturing, shipping, and billing
operations, often supported by an enterprise resource planning system.

2. What is the relationship between CAD and CAM systems?

- When the prototypes are satisfactory, the electronic drawings and material specifications can be
transferred from the CAD systems to CAM systems.

3. What are the concerns in cash management, and how do cash management ISs help financial
managers?
- Some of the most important factors to consider are risk, measured as the variability of the
security’s past yield; expected return; and liquidity, a measure of how fast an investment can be
turned into cash. The goal of financial managers, including controllers and treasures, is to
manage an organization’s money as efficiently as possible. They achieve this goal by collecting
payables as soon as possible, making payments at the latest time allowed by contract or law,
ensuring that sufficient funds are available for day-to-day operations and taking advantage of
opportunities to accrue the highest yield on funds not used for current activities.

4. What is time to market? How have ISs affected time to market?

- The time between generating an idea for a product and completing a prototype that can be mass-
manufactured; also called engineering lead time. Minimizing lead time is key to maintaining a
competitive edge: it leaves competitors insufficient time to introduce their own products first. ISs
contribute significantly to this effort. Over the past two decades, automakers have used engineering
and other ISs to reduce the time from product concept to market from 7 years to 18 months.

5. What are the typical components of ERP systems?

- The Manufacturing Resource Planning component, the accounting component and CRM
components are also available and are tied to other components through orders applications and
sales records.

6. What is JIT? How do MRP and MRII systems help achieve JIT?
- Manufacturing, where suppliers ship parts directly to assembly lines, saving the cost of
warehousing raw materials parts and subassemblies. They combine material requirements
planning with other manufacturing related activities to plan the entire manufacturing process,
not just inventory
Maguiwe, Loverson O.

7. Many sales reps have no offices, yet they have access to huge resources, and their productivity
is great. Explain how that is possible.
- They are equipped with information technology to facilitate their productivity. They are
equipped with notebook computers that store promotional information for protective
customers, software for manipulating this information and computerized forms. They carry
laptop computers and PDAs that contain all the information they need which allow them to
connect to their organizational information systems through the internet.

8. What is RFID, and what role does it play in SCM?

- Technology that enables identification of an object by receiving a radio signal from a tag attached to
the object. RFID technology lets SCM professionals maintain an accurate account of their inventory
as it moves through the warehouse and the fulfillment process. This ensures proper delivery and
can lower costs.

9. What is EOQ? Which two problems do ISs that calculate EOQ help minimize?
- The optimal quantity of a specific raw material that allows a business to minimize overstocking
and save cost without risking under stocking and missing production deadlines.

10. In brief, what is the purpose of customer relationship management systems?

- To increase profit