Replies Understanding the Supply Chain and Strategic Fit

two separate post that need replies 250 words for each substantial reply 1. CR Supply Chain Stages and Flows in Soda Purchase Example When a customer purchases a soda from the convenience store, it passes through several stages of the supply chain. According to Chopra (2019), a supply chain comprises all parties that fulfill customer requests through direct or indirect actions. The supply chain for soda starts with raw material providers who supply aluminum and sweeteners before moving through manufacturers to distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and finally reaching customers. The supply chain stages encompass the movement of products, information, and financial flows. The product flow transports goods from the manufacturer to the retailer, then to the customer, progressing through multiple stages from raw materials and components, with information potentially traveling both directions. For example, the convenience store may communicate sales figures to its distributor while maintaining contact regarding the estimated delivery dates and times. According to Chopra (2019), customers then send payments upstream to retailers before they reach distributors and manufacturers. Total Supply Chain Profitability Consideration by Dell Total supply chain profitability aims to optimize profits across the entire supply chain network. The calculation involves subtracting the aggregate costs incurred to fulfill the customer’s request from the customer’s perceived product/service value (Chopra, 2019). Total supply chain profitability drives supply chain members to make decisions that enhance overall supply chain earnings instead of individual profits. Dells supply chain philosophy demonstrates the importance of the total supply chain profitability principle. The company focuses on increasing total supply chain surplus instead of optimizing separate functions. Between 1993 and the early 2000s, Dell’s direct shipping of customized computers to customers became a core practice. Dell improved its supply chain efficiency by eliminating distributors and retailers and selling custom computers directly to consumers. This helped the company achieve savings by offering quick, low-cost modifications of its products directly. The simplified business model also enabled them to operate with minimal inventory, reduce product obsolescence, and respond more effectively to customer demands. Chopra (2019) emphasizes that Dell could not maintain its original business model indefinitely because technological advancements and changing customer needs required adaptation. During the mid-2000s, pressures of faster delivery times, increasing online competition, and changes in consumer purchasing behavior forced Dell to redesign their supply chain. Silbernagel et al. (2021) demonstrated that cross-company collaboration improves product quality and operational efficiency. For instance, Dell expanded upon its own processes by ensuring all supply chain partners were aligned. Its practice minimizes operational interruptions while giving them an advantage over competitors. Strategic, Planning, and Operational Decisions in Gap Example As a retailer, Gap would address its business decisions across strategic choices, planning activities, and operational tactics. Strategic decisions made by companies determine the structure of their supply chains (Chopra, 2019). Gap would need to determine the locations for both factories and warehouse distribution centers. Strategic decisions also involve whether to outsource production and which markets Gap should operate in. Retailer supply chain expenses and responsiveness to customer needs are determined through strategic decision-making. Optimized efficiency can also be achieved by making strategic decisions on seasonal inventory levels and supplier selection, along with determining production quantities based on expected sales to prevent overproduction and stock shortages. A retailer would also review and make short-term operational decisions directly manage order fulfillment logistics (Susitha et al., 2025). This would include decisions on store restocking processes, selecting the warehouse for shipping products to retailers, and coordinating return logistics. According to Chopra (2019), all three decision levels need to be cohesive for successful operation. Process Cycles and Push/Pull Boundary of Bookstore Purchase Purchasing a book at a local bookstore with a traditional system triggers several supply chain process cycles. When you purchase a book, you start the customer order cycle, while the bookstore initiates the replenishment cycle by ordering more copies from its distributor. The publisher prints additional books to start the manufacturers cycle, and the publisher orders more paper and ink to start the procurement cycle (Dhanush, 2025). The push/pull boundary represents the transition point in supply chain operations from forecast-driven push processes to customer demand-driven pull processes (Chopra, 2019). For the local bookstore, the boundary between push and pull operations occurs at the point of sale. The processes leading up to the purchase of the books are classified as push-based activities, such as printing additional books and shipping them to bookstores. Push/Pull Processes of Amazon Book Order The process of ordering a book from Amazon involves both push and pull processes. According to Chopra (2019), push processes operate on demand forecasts, whereas pull processes start in response to customer orders. Amazon forecasts customer demand to inform its purchasing decisions from publishers and to plan inventory placement and storage in fulfillment centers before receiving customer orders. The processes of purchasing books from publishers, with transportation to fulfillment centers, and storage of inventory are push operations (Bharadwaj, 2024). Conversely, the processes of picking, packing, shipping, and delivery commence as pull processes when triggered by a customer order placement. Any customer-initiated returns are classified as pull processes because this return activity starts when customers take specific actions. The transition between push and pull operations occurs at the point where customer orders are received. The strategic placement of push processes enables Amazon to deliver products to customers quickly while maintaining cost efficiency. If Amazon continues pushing inventory beyond this point, it will accumulate excess stock. Allowing complete pull operations for Amazon orders would result in extended processing times for customer deliveries. Supply Chain Key Decisions That Impact the Success or Failure of Amazon Product, information, and fund flows are three flows that contribute to the efficiency of a supply chain. Flaws in product flow cycles also result in inventory management problems. Additionally, the lack of available financial resources produces stress among supply chain channel members. Amazon is a great example of a company that maintains effective control over supply chain flows by leveraging current information systems to meet customer needs, utilizing fast fulfillment centers to deliver products, and offering digital payment solutions to facilitate rapid financial transactions (Chen, 2024). There are two key supply chain profitability decisions to include choosing facility locations and formulating inventory policy. The proximity of facilities to major markets enables quicker customer deliveries while reducing expenses. The way inventory policy decisions are made also influences the quantity of products that businesses need to maintain in their stock. Adequate stock management ensures product availability for consumers while avoiding surplus inventory that raises costs. Supply Chain Decisions in an Automotive Manufacturer At the strategic level, automotive manufacturers decide where to source suppliers globally, where to locate factories and warehouses, and whether to outsource large components such as engines or transmissions (Min & Sheriff, 2025). These choices determine both expenses and the supply chain’s adaptability, in terms of flexibility and responsiveness. From a planning perspective, decisions establish production output levels and inventory quantities at each facility, determine supplier delivery schedules for synchronized production, and calculate workforce requirements for each shift based on demand expectations. Operational decisions may involve daily parts orders from suppliers, planning which cars go on assembly lines, and scheduling deliveries to dealerships. Quality control decisions can also be made in real time to manage operational activities. References Bharadwaj, P. N. (2024). Empirical examination of the relationship between supply chain effectiveness and a companys overall success. Administrative Sciences, 14(4), 74. Chen, Y. (2024). Research on supply chain optimization at Amazon. Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences, 105(1), 257261. Chopra, S. (2019). Supply chain management: Strategy, planning, and operation (7th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc. Dhanush Kumar B., A. A. (2025, April 10). Online bookstore and management system. IJSRT Journal. Min, H., & Sheriff, K. M. M. (2025). Enhancing resilience in the Global Automotive Supply Chain: Lessons Learned from the Systematic Literature Review. International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 51(3), 339375. Silbernagel, R., Wagner, C., Albers, A., Trapp, T.-U., & Lanza, G. (2021). Data-based supply chain collaboration: Improving product quality in global production networks by sharing information. Procedia CIRP, 104, 470475. Susitha, E., Jayarathne, A., & Herath, H. M. R. P. (2025). Stitching competition with digital threads: Unveiling the drivers of competitive success in the apparel sector. PLOS ONE, 20(6), e0325945. 2. JR A Can of Soda For a can of soda to be purchased, its raw ingredients must first be cultivated or processed. This includes the sugarcane or corn farms used to produce the sweetener, the distillery or water treatment plant used to produce the water, and the chemical plant used to produce the coloring and artificial flavors. These ingredients are then mixed together by a Tier 1 or Tier 2 supplier, where they are put into cans made by another Tier 1 supplier at the assembly plant. From the supplier stage to the customer stage, the product flow follows this process in a linear fashion, but information flows about sales, reviews, and defects in the product almost always go in both directions (Chopra, 2019). Once the can of soda has been assembled, it can then be distributed to retailers for a customer to buy. Total Supply Chain Profitability For a company like Dell, which builds advanced electronic devices with multiple branching stages in each model’s supply chain, understanding the total supply chain profitability is essential for the company to determine its net income from each sale. Factors such as advertising, component production, storage, transportation, and fees all increase the supply chain cost. Should this total cost exceed the customer value of the product, then it is not profitable (Chopra, 2019). This can be especially deceiving with products that have high price tags, as the complexity of the process leading up to making a sale leaves much room for excessive waste. Strategic, Planning, and Operational Decisions For a clothing retailer like Gap, there are a variety of decisions which go into selling apparel. Strategic decisions include the structuring, resource allocation, and process planning of a business, which for Gap might involve deciding which markets are supplied by a location, subcontracting manufacturers for creating clothing, developing inventory policies, and determining the timing and size of marketing tactics. For operational decisions, Gap might deal with individual customer orders, especially if their business model includes custom apparel; other operational decisions include specific inventory allocation, establishing deadlines, creating warehouse pick lists, scheduling crews, and determining the size and frequency of replenishment orders (Chopra, 2019). Another major decision which would be relevant to Gap is what to do about customer brand loyalty, as Gap is a well known retailer that has been known to put its logo on its own merchandise. Cultivating brand loyalty is made possible through the moderating effect of social capital, which allows Gap to project itself to buyers while also reinforcing relationships with its suppliers (Celestini et al., 2022). Supply Chain Cycles and Push/Pull Boundary Locations For a bookstore to sell a book to a customer, there are supply chain cycles shared among all physical books. In the procurement cycle, the materials and manufacturers for assembling and binding a book must be coordinated so they can enter the manufacturing cycle, where each book is physically made. These books are then delivered to retailers in the replenishment cycle, where from there they can meet customer demands in the customer order cycle (Chopra, 2019). Similarly to supply chain cycles, there are also discrete push/pull boundaries for physical books, but the locations of these boundaries depend on the business model used by a particular bookstore. For reactive “pull” processes, customers may place an order for a book, which can then be fulfilled starting with the procurement cycle where suppliers might be curated for an entirely new book, the manufacturing cycle where pre-selected materials for the binding might be chosen for custom orders, or more often the replenishment cycle where completed books might be shipped from warehouses to the storefront for pickup. Usually though, all of these supply chain cycles would be on the speculative “push” side of the push/pull boundary, with the customer order cycle being a pull process by necessity (Chopra, 2019). Push/Pull Boundaries and Processes For an online bookstore such as Amazon, the push/pull boundary is at the replenishment cycle, as the company relies on its warehouses to stock products from countless suppliers and distribute them on demand (Chopra, 2019). The two processes firmly within the push element are the procurement and manufacturing processes, while two in the pull element include the replenishment and customer order cycles. Impact of Supply Chain Flows Looking at Amazon as a whole company, the supply chain flow can determine whether it is profitable by affecting the supply chain cost, which in Amazon’s case is largely tied to warehousing costs and percentage payments to product suppliers. Two supply chain decisions which could have such an impact include outsourcing shipping to distributors like the US Postal Service and FedEx, and collaborating with suppliers to fulfill customer orders (Chopra, 2019). Outsourcing is not entirely foolproof, however- there are plenty of instances where it would be better to keep logistical infrastructure in-house (Sharakhin et al., 2021), which is a part of why Amazon has been sending its own delivery vans in recent years. More Strategic, Planning, and Operational Decisions Similarly to Gap, automotive manufacturers can rely a lot on social capital when deciding on what strategic, planning, and operational moves it should make (Celestini et al., 2022). Unlike a clothing retailer, an automotive manufacturer has a differently structured supply chain which responds in unique ways to executive decisions. Instead of cotton and dyes, ores and metals form the bulk of the raw materials which must be procured before manufacturing can begin. These then need to be handled by Tier 2 suppliers in order to become usable components inside of vehicles, which are then assembled by Tier 1 suppliers into an automobile’s main systems. It is only when these complex components are built that an automotive vehicle can be assembled (Chopra, 2019), which means that any interruption in the product flow can severely delay the fulfillment of a customer order. Consequently, maintaining good internal supply chain management and supplier relationship management is at least as important as maintaining a high standard for customer relationships. This is perhaps the most significant difference between what has already been said about clothing retailers and automotive manufacturers. References Celestini, J., Goecks, L. S., Lolli, F., & Sellitto, M. A. (2022). Influence of dependence on social capital and operational performance: A study of the textile and clothing industry. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 37(9), 1933-1947. Links to an external site. Chopra, S. (2019). Supply chain management: Strategy, planning, and operation (7th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc. Sharakhin, P. S., Levchenko, A. V., & Renzhin, D. A. (2021). Comparing efficiency of outsourcing or insourcing digital logistics in supply chain management. 2021 International Conference on Quality Management, Transport and Information Security, Information Technologies (IT&QM&IS), 716-718. IEEE.