Motorola Makes Big Supply Chain Investment in Singapore

Chapter 1: Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management

Question 1-9

Question:

Look for articles related to supply chain online or at Fortune, BusinessWeek, or CNN. How do they relate to the primary topics discussed in this chapter?

As discussed in the chapter, supply chain management is one of the most important functions in running a business. Sometimes it is referred to as the factor that determines success or failure. Businesses have based their success on well thought and organized supply chains. In the chapter, one of the topics that were mentioned was globalization. As we have experienced and still experiencing globalization has become part of the life cycle of a business. Businesses that missed the boat to expand and get in a position to compete on the global level were left static or experienced decrease in market share. In the article published in BusinessWeek by Aaron Tan, “Motorola makes big Supply Chain Investment in Singapore,” we are able to see the perfect example of a successful multinational, global technology company. There is almost no country around the world that doesn’t have Motorola products in its market. For Motorola to achieve that the must have a great supply chain in order to be able to deliver the latest products to all the locations that operations take place, in the right quantity at the right time. In the article is mentioned that Motorola was planning and actually later on invested $60 million in Singapore to “centralize and streamline global supply chain operations.” We are talking about a company that has more than $10 billion worth of activities each year in supply chain operations. I believe that is one of the best examples to see how important is to this global businesses, efficient supply chain management. It is the moving factor of operations for some of them and for some others is the feeding factor for operations and the key to success. In other words, for some businesses efficient supply chain means that...