Ceg W4 Picture the Supply Chain

Week 4 Checkpoint: Picture the Supply Chain

Carola E. Green

XMGT/216

08/23/13

Dr. Shawn M. Rieder

Picture the Supply Chain

A supply chain is the way material, information, money, and services from the raw materials suppliers, flows through a company’s factories and warehouses along with its corresponding organization and processes, on its way to the end user (Rainer & Turban, 2009). The three segments in the supply chain are: the upstream component (sourcing and procurement of the product), the internal component (packaging, assembly, and manufacturing of the product), and the downstream component (distribution of the product). In the Warner Brothers’ Case Study 8.3 (Rainer & Turban, 2009, p.243), Warner Brothers moved to include a digital end-to-end component to respond to customer demand to digital media. The studio relied on Hewlett-Packard as the supplier to deliver their product to a worldwide customer base using existing and new digital platforms.

The upstream component that Hewlett-Packard provides is a complete package deal of hardware, software and services that permit Warner Brothers to package, manufacture, and assemble the films and digital versions of all its productions. This replaces the outdated film production and distribution systems with a digital supply chain that is more responsive to customer demand with options like DVDs and video-on-demand. Additionally, the size of the files and the speed of access to the files let to the creating of E-masters files so Warner Brothers can now use multiple format channels to reach its customers.

While Warner Brothers has already digitized most of their extensive film library and their cartoon library, there is still room for improvement. Recognizing the value of upstream goal recognition to reduce conflicts in operational day-to-day communication is important (Oosterhuis, van der Vaart, Molleman, 2012). Therefore, coordinating the information flow and standardizing quality of content...