How an US firm may use Sales Promotion and Distribution infrastructure of an Indian firm to sell the products in India and in return the Indian firm can use the same strategy for the sale of its product in USA. (Hint – Strategic Alliance).
.......... The major strategic successes involving information technology in the last two decades have involved a redesign of inter-organizational relations. New product and service offerings, channel systems capabilities, and target marketing initiatives are enabled through these partnerships, alliances, and information interchange arrangements.
New organizational and market relationships are made possible through systems that cross organizational boundaries. In today’s ever changing environments strategic alliances have emerged as a driving force behind the success of many business ventures in India and US. Strategic alliances with US firm allow Indian firm to expand their reach without having to maximize their risk or commit themselves beyond their core business and vice versa. Alliances are a way of reaping the rewards of team effort - and the gains from forming strategic alliances appear to be substantial. Companies participating in alliances report that at much as 18 percent of their revenues come from their alliances. Increasing intensity of competition, a growing need to operate on a global scale, a fast changing marketplace, and industry convergence in many markets are the motivating factors of strategic alliance.
STRATEGIC ALLIANCES
....... The establishment of strategic alliances among organizations is a rapidly merging phenomenon, and has been given inadequate attention in many boardrooms. Many strategic alliances involve, and are predicated on, the availability of information technology that gives structure to these arrangements. Many forms of these strategic alliances exist. Alliances are formed for joint marketing, joint sales or distribution, joint production, design collaboration, technology licensing, and research and development. Relationships can be vertical between a vendor and a customer, horizontal between vendors, local, or global.
Imagine yourself as the manager of bank where automation is to be made. Explain the steps you will to do it?
......... The speed of growth, innovation, and change in the banking industry has always made it challenging for banks to standardize data sourcing. Customers, today demand personal service whenever and wherever they like, and each financial institution’s competition is just a mouse click or a street corner away. Additionally, there are major challenges presented by mega mergers, decreasing margins, a stricter regulatory environment, and fierce competition, in some cases coming from nontraditional sources.
Operating business lines have a natural tendency to enter the data that’s most relevant to their businesses using their own definitions, formats, and methods without necessarily considering the needs of other parts of the business. Over time, this can lead to increasingly disparate data streams flowing from multiple operating units to management and to support functions such as risk, finance, and treasury—which in turn can make it costly and time-consuming for banks to gain the firm-wide view that has become so critical to their success. To combat this tendency toward divergence and to improve data standardization, today, the banks are turning to a combination of organizational structures, policies and controls, and technologies.
As a result a revolution is taking place in retail banking. A marriage of high-tech equipment and high-touch service has created a new level of automation, promising not only to control costs and enhance service, but to boost sales capabilities, as well. Driven by a growing movement to turn the retail branch from a transaction processing center to a sales environment, banks of all sizes are using technology to gain a competitive edge. Today, money has evolved beyond physical form, and can be measured by electronic pulses. This electronic representation of money has made it easier to progressively increase the use of information technology for banking operations.
Today, different types of computer packages offering ``Total Branch Automation (TBA)'' are available to automate the various activities of a typical branch. It is also possible to make banking more global due to electronic automation of work processes. As the manager of a bank I can adopt a technological innovation in my branch with regard to the automation. Technological innovation has also speeded up bank transactions, in the process, reducing human drudgery and possibilities of human error.
Banking operations have become more customer-friendly and flexible. Approach to the bank branch concerned has become multi-channeled and more and more customers are finding little need to visit the bank. Introduction of automation has also liberated the banks from a lot of paper-work. While banks in India have not become fully paperless, there is a steady movement in that direction. Banks have realized that persuading customers to carry out transactions using electronically available channels without physically visiting the bank is less expensive for them.
STANDARDIZATION AND ALIGNMENT BEGIN WITH DATA GOVERNANCE
Many banks say that standardization begins with central determination and control of data definitions, formats, and attributes. Often a data-governance body with representation from finance, risk, IT, and operations is charged with promulgating a unified data-governance policy and coordinating data standards across the bank.
IMPROVEMENT THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, PROCESS, AND POLICY CHANGES
The constant evolution of banks’ businesses assures that standardizing and bringing together data will always be a work in progress, but several banks say they are also pursuing major standardization and alignment initiatives, which they anticipate will lead to substantial improvements.
DATA ALIGNMENT YIELDS BUSINESS BENEFITS
It can be difficult to attach a monetary value to the contribution that faster, more flexible reporting makes to decision making, because the cost of avoiding a bad decision is not knowable.
However, the benefits that financial institutions stand to reap from better data alignment help to make the long time frames for improvement worthwhile. For banks that are struggling to meet reporting requirements using many manual workarounds, seeking improvement may not be optional. Other banks are seeking improvements in alignment because they will ultimately help free resources in finance for more valuable work. To make the most of always-scarce resources, banks are working to make sure that their investments in regulatory compliance also help improve data alignment and automation.
As the manager of a bank I will exploit the following new technologies, in automation which will also improve the profitability of the bank.
Automation
Automation came to banks, beginning with ALPMs (Automatic Ledger Posting Machines). The repetitive and cumbersome task of ledger maintenance had been simplified. A server at the branch will contain the entire database. It was realised that it would be more fruitful to have the total database at a central location and create a wide area network, WAN. Such a system required a lot of redundancy to ensure 24 x 7 availability to the ... (for the completed and new version of improved answer- click here)
Materials Requirements Planning is a process that references several key business activities as well as information across your business including all levels in the Bill of Materials, sales forecasts, sales orders and inventory. We can determine exactly what and when materials are required, in order to produce the most timely and competitively priced products and services for customers.
The MRP controller is responsible for all activities related to specifying the type, quantity, and time of the requirements, in addition to calculating when and for what quantity an order proposal has to be created to cover these requirements. The MRP controller needs all the information on stocks, stock reservations, and stocks on order to calculate quantities, and also needs information on lead times and procurement times to calculate dates.
Here illustrated the basic aspects of MATERIAL REQUIREMENT PLANNING.
Tyre manufacturing organizations face the same daily practical problem - that customers want products to be available in a shorter time than it takes to make them. This means that some level of planning is required. Tyre companies need to control the types and quantities of materials they purchase, plan which type of tyre products are to be produced and in what quantities and ensure that they are able to meet current and future customer demand, all at the lowest possible cost. Making a bad decision in any of these areas will make the company lose money. A few examples are given below:
·If one tyre company purchases insufficient quantities of latex used in tyre manufacturing, or the wrong item such as sulphur or carbon, they may be unable to meet contracts to supply products by the agreed date.
·If that company purchases excessive quantities of latex, money is being wasted - the excess quantity ties up cash while it remains as stock and may never even be used at all. However, some purchased items will have a minimum quantity that must be met, therefore, purchasing excess is necessary.
·Beginning production of an order at the wrong time can cause customer deadlines to be missed.
MATERIAL REQUIREMENT PLANNING is a tool to deal with these problems. It provides answers for several questions:
·What items are required?
·How many are required?
·When are they required?
The major benefits of MATERIAL REQUIREMENT PLANNING is mentioned below
Key Benefits
• Plan production automatically and accurately
• Efficiently manage investment in expensive inventory
• Produce timely and competitively priced products
• Respond on the fly to production planning change requirements
• Automatically suggest and generate Factory & Purchase orders
• Provides accurate planning of inventory purchasing
• Manage requirements and forecasts by selective categories (trees)
• Forecast accurately using historical & seasonal data
• Manual adjustments allow for unforeseen situations
• Manage the manufacturing process with visual planning board
• Analyse factory order scheduling
The goal of materials management is to consolidate and efficiently handle core services. It creates truck deliveries and service vehicle routes that reduce conflicts for vehicles and pedestrians. Delivery sites and loading docks are more effective and reduce redundancy. Cost is reduced when it comes to solid and hazardous waste removal, storage, and recycling. Utility infrastructure and service equipment relocation can improve aesthetics.
The milestone in the progress of human being is the invention of tyres. Now a days Tyre manufacturing industry is the day to day developing one. The profit of the industry relies upon the overall management of production and distribution of tyres, to the customer needs. So we should make special attention to the material management during production.
As we are the manufacturer of tyres we should produce different varieties of tyres for the following types of vehicles
ØMotor Bike
ØScooters
ØCars
ØBuses
ØTrucks etc.
IMPORTANCE OF MRP
It is important to prepare a detailed material requirement planning (M.R.P) for the production of tyres for above said vehicles. The production process is concerned with transforming a range of inputs into those outputs that required by the market. The MRP process explodes the bills of material, usually overnight or on weekends, and develops the requirements for material. The material requirements feed the capacity planning module which tests the schedule developed by MRP against current capacity.
The tyre manufacturing industry starts its functioning by having latex. The latex is combined with carbon, oil, sulphur and other chemicals and undergoes a number of processes, many of which are industrial secrets! All this produces black sheets of rubber. The rubber sheets are heated and thin lengths of nylon, polyester or even steel are woven into them to give them rigidity. These woven sheets form the main basis of the tyre.
The inner rim of the tyre is called the "bead ring" and is produced separately to the main tread of the tyre. The bead rings are formed by coating thick wires with the rubber mixture and coiling them up around a template.
The woven sheets and bead rings are joined together and finally the tread pattern of the tyre moulded on top. The tyre produced is not yet complete and is called a "green" tyre. The green tyre is then Vulcanized by applying heat and pressure in special machines to produce the finished tyre.
We can use material requirement planning to plan the materials for tyre manufacturing.
MRP can be applied both to items that are purchased from outside suppliers and to sub-assemblies, produced internally, that are components of more complex items.
The data that must be considered include:
·The end item (or items) being created. This is sometimes called Independent Demand or Level “0 on BOM (Bill of materials).
·How much is required at a time.
·When the quantities are required to meet demand.
·Shelf life of stored materials.
·Inventory status records. Records of net materials available for use already in stock (on hand) and materials on order from suppliers.
·Bills of materials. Details of the materials, components and sub-assemblies required to make each product.
·Planning Data. This includes all the restraints and directions to produce the end items. This includes such items as: Routings, Labor and Machine Standards, Quality and Testing Standards, Pull/Work Cell and Push commands, Lot sizing techniques (i.e. Fixed Lot Size, Lot-For-Lot, and Economic Order Quantity), Scrap Percentages, and other inputs.
Outputs
There are two outputs and a variety of messages/reports:
·Output 1 is the "Recommended Production Schedule" which lays out a detailed schedule of the required minimum start and completion dates, with quantities, for each step of the Routing and Bill Of Material required to satisfy the demand from the Master Production Schedule (MPS).
·Output 2 is the "Recommended Purchasing Schedule". This lays out both the dates that the purchased items should be received into the facility AND the dates that the Purchase orders, or Blanket Order Release should occur to match the production schedules.
Messages and Reports:
·Purchase orders. An order to a supplier to provide materials.
·Reschedule notices. These recommend canceling, increasing, delaying or speeding up existing orders.
Note that the outputs are recommended. Due to a variety of changing conditions in companies, since the last MRP / ERP system Re-Generation, the recommended outputs need to be reviewed by trained people to group orders for benefits in set-up or freight savings. These actions are beyond the linear calculations of the MRP computer software.
A large component of materials management is ensuring that parts and materials used in the supply chain meet minimum requirements by performing quality assurance (QA). Parts and material are tested, both before purchase orders are placed and during use, to ensure there are no short or long term issues that would disrupt the supply chain. This aspect of material management is most important heavily automated industries like tyre manufacturing industry, since failure rates due to faulty parts can slow or even stop production lines, throwing off timetables for production goals.
We can plan material requirements at plant levelor for different MRP areas. With MRP at plant level, the system adds together stocks from all of the individual storage locations, with the exception of individual customer stock, to determine total plant stock. The requirements are combined in the planning run and procurement elements are created for these pegged requirements with........ (To get the completed new version of personalized answer, please click here)
Which are the basic information you should have if you are to be an effective International Trade Manager in an exporting firm?
An export is any good or commodity, transported from one country to another country in a legitimate fashion, typically for use in trade. Export goods or services are provided to foreign consumers by domestic producers. The term "export" is derived from the conceptual meaning as to ship the goods and services out of the port of a country. The seller of such goods and services is referred to an "exporter" who is based in the country of export. In International Trade, exports refer to selling goods and services produced in home country to other markets. The process by, which international trade is handled is known as the international trade management. Even if the international trade manifests favorable trends, there is competition to handle in the international trade market.
Managing international trade policies, restructuring them according to the need of the hour, implementing the various trades polices, abiding by the norms governing international trade, all are taken into account when one speaks of international trade management. The chances of diversifying the market base, attaining low costs of labor and manufacturing, economies of scale, first-mover advantage and faster growth rate of the economy in comparison to the home market, are some of attractions that woo companies to enter these markets. An awareness of the pitfalls that accompany entry into foreign markets is also necessary to fully reap the benefits. These pitfalls may be in the form of economic, socio-cultural and legal factors.
The decision to enter and operate in international markets is a strategic one. An awareness of various strategic issues is necessary to ensure success in foreign markets. The critical role of knowledge in generating organizational advantage has been increasingly recognized in the strategic management field, there is little research examining firm-specific foreign knowledge, the construct itself, its determinants, and impact on export performance. As the manager of an exporting firm I should perform the following functions.
Gathering knowledge about the latest international trade happenings
Imparting information to the clients in matters related to the betterment of trade with the client's trading partners.
Helping the client grow by providing better networking facilities.
Help building partnership.
I should master in the following areas of international trade to achieve in this arena.
To become an effective international trade manager, I should have the basic information regarding international trade management. The following information will helps me to do the international trade profitably.
FIRM’S ABILITY TO EXPORT
Our firm should evaluate the commitment of its management and staff to exporting, the funding options available, and our capabilities to increase production. Companies should only export if they are willing to invest the time and resources into researching the markets they are interested in. Important factors in deciding if exporting will be a profitable venture includes determining if there is a need for the product and determining which channel of distribution would be most successful. If our product has been successful domestically, remember that it may need to be modified to be marketable abroad.
Products that do not require a great deal of training for use, versatile products, and unique products tend to have a higher export potential, but investing the time to adjust your product to a viable target market can produce good results for products that do not fit into these categories. After we have assessed these marketing challenges, I will be better able to determine if exporting is right for my exporting firm.
