Question

What were the reasons for Walmart shifting its focus to Africa?

2. Do you think Africa offers good growth prospects for WalMart in the future?

3. Why did Wal-Mart face opposition from trade unions and other government departments over its acquisition of Massmart? Do you think the opposition coalition had a valid point in opposing the deal? Justify your answer.

4. What strategies should Wal-Mart follow to succeed in a market like Africa with its low income levels and high poverty incidence? Do you think its low-cost model will be successful in Africa? Give reasons to support your answer.

Answer 1

1. Why did Apple decide to outsource much of its production to companies around the world rather than build its own production facilities?

Apple wants to focus on its core competencies and leave the rest of it to the supply chain. Their competencies includes innovation, R&D on customer needs and new technologies. In addition, Apple has a strong supply chain team which can manage the availability of products in time within the cost and quality requirements. After all, Apple does intensive amount of testing sn prelaunch to check global production commitments and inventory management

2. What makes Apple’s Supply Chains so productive and efficient?

Apple Does a lot of R&D to cultivate new technologies and/or to acquire intellectual property needed for future products. They test the product concepts via marketing research, product testing, and total cost analysis. After that, Apple typically does a prelaunch of new products, where global production, sourcing commitments, inventory management, and so on are evaluated. They do demand forecasts, resolving potential backlogs, and ensuring that the products are in the hands of its customers in as fast cycle time as possible. After the launch, monitoring starts with periodic reviews of inventory, demand, life cycle status, and component cost forecasts.

The huge amount of cash available have partially been used to place high-volume orders, which strengthen supplier relationships, and in other ways maintain global supply chain leadership. Apple has a very strong supply chain infrastructure because of which it could solve almost all the problems in the Supply Chain

3. What do some of Apple’s recent problems tell you about the risks of developing an extensive Supply Chain?

The problems Apple is facing include obtaining enough quality components for its consumer electronics, potential for supply chain disruptions (natural and people created), dependence on third-party logistics providers, and inventory management issues. Apple, having a very strong Supply chain was able to effectively manage these problems.

But these problems are really alarming for any other companies which depends on the supply chain extensively for products. Any quality issues will lead to a stoppage of production line and in turn results in lost sales. Any quality issues unidentified will lead to recall of the product and loss of reputation. Supply chain disruptions can bring in huge amount of inventory mismatch and in money being blocked in terms of inventory. Dependence on third party logistics providers also may create an issue as it may result in inventory not available in time for assembly. It may also result in no availability of products in time at shops resulting in lost sales.