Woodsynergy Inc Case Study

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be even competitors, work closely together is the high search costs that sometimes companies come upon. These search costs are a key factor for a company to locate its products as well as information. Also the necessity of a real-time interface allows partners to create a system that helps each of them be connected with each other. III) Question 3:

There are many reasons for which IT is used in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) such as a reduction in costs like manual work. IT also allows an enhancement of information quality, by eradicating human errors and allowing a faster flow of information between organizations. Another important factor is the total transaction volume in a company since IT can be used for transaction processing.

Through integrating information technology with the Supply chain, the enterprise would be able to increase its efficiency and productivity. It would also be capable of meeting the customers’ orders with a high quality and thus gain customer satisfaction, in addition to attaining a competitive advantage in the market. Information technology has facilitated the work of many firms and allowed them to activate and maneuver solid supply chain systems which allow companies to meet their objectives easily. The role of Information Technology can be considered to be of immense importance when it comes to the Supply Chain Management. Information Technology authorizes valuable control through transaction processing, supply chain planning and collaboration, and order tracking and delivery coordination. The IT infrastructure qualifications grant enterprises competitive positioning among the many organizations because it assists in satisfying customers and fulfilling their demands. This helps in serving the patrons in the most efficient manner possible. Information is of great importance for the executives to shrink down inventory and reduce the human resource requirements. And by doing that the company would be capable of achieving a high competitive level. Many companies use IT to process transactions either with their suppliers or with their customers. In some cases firms also use IT to process delivery verifications. This enables companies, as mentioned before, to reduce manual labor costs that are related to sales transactions, as well as improving information quality and reliability. Another usage of IT in SCM is planning and collaboration, although not as commonly found in all companies. Companies use the information shared through the IT system for operating a cross organizational process. An additional usage to IT is for providing information on the tracking and coordinating of orders and deliveries. Monitoring each order is essential when trying to make each delivery meet its time requirements. The optimal prototype for handling the supply chain management is the SCOR model which was created by the Supply Chain Council. The SCOR model is used to measure, spot and enhance the supply chain routes. This is realized through a cycle of five steps. 1) To Plan the source of information.

2) To identify the source location and the products.

3) To build the production locations.

4) To Deliver.

5) To Return.

The SCOR model is used to simulate costs of the materials used, the cost of transportation, the cost of energy, and cost of fuel, in addition to employee wages. Moreover, it measure and deals with the time for the procedures that need to be completed precisely. For instance, The Corporation WoodSynergy might have varios suppliers and even distributors of wood among the whole world, therefore a simulation of the transportations, conveyages, patterns, cycles and even environmental crises can be evaluated to perceive the alterations on the effectiveness of the supply chain. The diverse variables can be altered and the supply chain effectiveness and efficiency can thus be observed easily, thus, the best strategy can be chosen. This will help in improve the supply chain before it applied to the projects. Best practices sharing involve sharing info among different shareholders of the supply chain. This can be done through the use of a real time interface such as the internet. Using the internet and networks aids in allowing communication of the suppliers. It reduces the time of delivery, thus leading to a reduction in slow response. They would be able to establish the finest ways of transportation according to their locations by sharing the information they have with the suppliers. To keep the cost at its lowest, the firms may use email to transfer important documents, CAD files and maybe spreadsheets to eliminate the restraints of time and distance. By applying Information Technology in the ‘planning’ course, data gathering will be easier. Information Technology allows you to check for the balance between resources and customer requirements. For instance, using the RFID’s or barcodes to monitor inventory levels each change in the item from the storing location, to the selling, and the quantity of the available items can be tracked easily. Through more integrated IT systems, suppliers now share the costs of maintaining safety stocks. Therefore Information Technology is highly important.

IV) Question 4:

Key performance indicator is a measure to help evaluate the success of a particular activity and to understand what is important to this firm. It is also based on the performance in relation with the goals and purposes of the company; thus it determines whether the company is on the right track or not For Woodsynergy, its goal is to meet customer’s demand with the highest quality level and on the right time. As a result, there are several keys of performance, defined below, used to evaluate whether woodsynergy is on the right track and whether they are making profit from their investment Profitability is the money resulting after calculating the difference between expenses and revenues. Any profit that is gained can be used for another investment, or other business activity such as buying stocks of wood. So for woodsynergy ti make some return on their investment, they need to increase revenue by selling more, and paying less expenses.

Productivity, by definition, is the ratio of output over input. It is an important factor because it reflects the wealth of the company and its ability to compete with other firms. When the output increases,input will decrease, the ratio will get closer to 1 and hence achieve high productivity. For woodsynergy, its productivity is the ratio of the amount of the product produced such as furniture and cabinet over the amount of inputs used to produce these outputs (furniture). Hence, when the sale of these products is