Management of Marketing Channels Assignment

It analyzes the core businesses of the company as logistics and supply chain that is subjective for the development and business achievement of the company. All findings of the company examples are gained during whole study from a range of reliable sources; such as websites, textbooks, audio materials, and other consistent newspapers. Introduction The core purpose of this statement is to draw and to discuss the role of supply chain management is playing today and how the company has capitalized it and use of Flextronics’s technology to place its self in logistics management.

Also it includes a justification of Flextronics use of reverse logistics and its relation to marketing channel and last of all personal view of Flextronics’s role in Channel Management. The report will be organized as follows:

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1. Section 1: The role of Supply Chain Management
2. Section 2: Flextronics’ Logistic Management
3. Section 3: Reverse Logistics
4. Section 4: Flextronics in Channel Management

The Role of Supply Chain Management

Business today is in a large-scale environment. This environment forces corporations, regardless of position or key market base, to judge the rest of the world in their competitive tactic analysis. Organization cannot separate them from or skip outside factors such as economic trends, competitive situations or technology innovation in other countries, if some of their competitors are rivals or are located in those countries. Companies are going truly worldwide with Supply-chain Management (SCM). A company can build up a product in the United States, produce in India and sell in Europe.

Companies have changed the ways in which they handle their actions and logistics activities. Changes in trade, the increase and innovation of transport infrastructures and the increase of competition have elevated the importance of flow management to levels. Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) of the economies and organizations has fuelled the competitiveness among company. A number of issues have lead to the growing globalization of the world economy and as a result the competitive environment faced by the company has changed radically since the last decade.

The drivers of globalization include: decreasing tariffs, improved transportation, communications and information technology, global manufacturing of products and availability of services across markets. These changes have enabled the global competitors to make the products and services available to customers worldwide, and the results have been a proliferation of choices for consumers and a need for the companies to offer greater products and service quality at lower costs in order to remain competitive.

Changes in technology and globalization of products and services have also resulted in increasingly dynamic markets and greater uncertainty in customer demand. SCM tools and techniques are mechanisms that can allow the companies to respond to these environmental changes. Hence the reason as to why supply chain management has become popular during the past decade is the phenomenon of globalization. Increased competition has made business look for core competencies for enhanced performance.

If a particular organization in some country has the core competence for a certain product/component/service, it will get the business for that product/service. This is called global outsourcing. A supply chain is defined as a set of three or more companies directly linked by one or more of the upstream and downstream flows of the products, services, finances and information from a source to a customer. It consists of all the stages involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer’s demand. It not only includes the manufacturer and suppliers, but also transporters, warehouses, retailers and customers themselves.

Within an organization, the supply chain includes all the functions involved in fulfilling a customer demand. These functions include, but are not limited to, new product development, marketing, operations, distribution, and finance and customer service. Flextronics International Ltd. (Flextronics), incorporated in May 1990, is a international supplier of straightly integrated complex design and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The corporation designs, builds, ships and services for electronics products for its consumers throughout a network of services in 30 countries among four continents.

Its set of clients consist of Alcatel-Lucent, Applied Materials, Cisco Systems, Dell, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, Johnson and Johnson, Lenovo, Microsoft, Research in Motion and Xerox. The services the Company presents across all the marketplaces it serves consist of design and engineering services, original design manufacturing (ODM) services; components design and manufacturing, systems assembly and manufacturing, printed circuit board and flexible circuit fabrication, logistics and after sales services. In April 2012, it obtained Stellar Microelectronics. In June 2012, Tessera Technologies, Inc. s wholly owned subsidiary, Digital Optics Corporation (DOC), purchased certain assets of Vista Point Technologies from the Company. As of March 31, 2011, the Company’s whole manufacturing capability was about 25. 1 million square feet. Flextronics works directly with leading manufacturing and distribution companies and facilitates them address their business challenges. From our practice working with key corporations in consumer products, high tech and industrial manufacturing, there are six key trends leading to significant impact and change to supply chain design and performance:

• Trend 1 – Demand planning
• Trend 2 – Globalization
• Trend 3 – Increased competition and price pressures
• Trend 4 – Outsourcing
• Trend 5 – Shortened and more complex product life cycles
• Trend 6 – Closer integration and collaboration with suppliers

Moreover, our company must face corporate challenges that impact Supply Chain Management such as reengineering globalization and outsourcing. Why is it so important for the company to get products to their customers quickly? Faster product availability is a key to increasing sales, says R. Michael Donovan of Natick (Mass. 2002), a management consultant specializing in manufacturing and information systems. There's a substantial profit advantage for the extra time that you are in the market and your competitor is not," he says. "If you can be there first, you are likely to get more orders and more market share. " The ability to deliver a product faster also can make or break a sale. "If two products appear to be equal and one is immediately available and the other will be available in a week, which would you choose? ” Clearly, “Supply Chain Management has an important role to play in moving goods more quickly to their destination”.

Flextronics Logistics Management

Initially, the supply chain management was referred to the functions of logistics, transportation, purchasing and supplies. Though, the growth of the supply chain management has moved to focus on integration, visibility, cycle time reduction and streamlined channels. The new integration has a variety of activities that include:

• Integrated Purchasing Strategy
• Supplier Integration
• Supply Base Management
• Supply Chain Management

Logistics activities continue living since the early 1900s. These tricks were first associated with the military as a branch of war that pertains to the movement and the supply for armies.

Military forces all the time used to make use of logistics models to make sure the availability of the compulsory material at the right place and on right time. Logistics is being used by the military even today. After 1950, supply chain management got a boost with the production and manufacturing sector getting highest attention. The inventory became the responsibility of the marketing, accounting and production areas. Order processing was part of accounting and sales. Supply chain management became one of the most powerful engines of business transformation. It is the one area where operational efficiency can be gained.

It reduces organizations costs and enhances customer service. The evolution led to an Internet-based application for Supply Chain Management. Within a firm’s supply chain management, logistics is the work required to move and geographically position inventory. As such, logistics is a subset of and occurs within the broader framework of a supply chain. Logistics is the process that creates value by timing and positioning inventory. Logistics is the combination of a firm’s order management, inventory, transportation, warehousing, materials handling, and packaging as integrated throughout a facility network.

Integrated logistics serves to link and synchronize the overall supply chain as a continuous process and is essential for effective supply chain connectivity. While the purpose of logistical work has remained essentially the same over the decades, the way the work is performed continues to radically change. Flextronics Global Services is a supplier of aftermarket supply chain logistics services. Its set of services serve clients operating in the computing, customer digital, infrastructure, industrial, mobile and medical markets.

It provides multiple logistics solutions, including supplier managed inventory, inbound goods management, product postponement, build/configure to order, order performance and distribution, and supply chain network design. Too many of such companies will find themselves victims of the powerful new transactional systems they put in place. Unfortunately, many leading-edge information systems can capture reams of data but cannot easily translate it into actionable intelligence that can enhance real-world operations.

As one logistics manager with a brand-new system said: "I've got three feet of reports with every detail imaginable, but it doesn't tell me how to run my business" This manager built an information technology system that integrates capabilities of three essential kinds. For the short term, the system enabled to handle day-to-day transactions and electronic commerce across the supply chain and thus helped align supply and demand by sharing information on orders and daily scheduling.

From a mid-term perspective, the system facilitated planning and decision making, supporting the demand and shipment planning and master production scheduling needed to allocate resources efficiently. To add long-term value, the system enabled strategic analysis by providing tools, such as an integrated network model, that synthesize data for use in high-level "what-if" scenario planning to help managers evaluate plants, distribution centers, suppliers, and third-party service alternatives.

Reverse Logistics

The raise of efficiency and competitiveness of companies, as well as legal and environmental aspects, and the change in the consumption culture of consumers have stimulated the growth of reverse logistics. In many cases, the existence of a well managed reverse logistics system is essential in the decision of purchasing products or services. Clients prefer suppliers that can operate in a close relation with their teams, to improve products and processes, and that cooperate in the solving of problems which may come off.

To those clients, the sale is just the beginning of a relationship. Reverse logistics is a rather wide area/function that involves all the operations related to the reuse of products and materials such as the logistics activities of collecting, dismantling and processing of products and/or materials and used pieces in order to assure a sustainable recuperation of those that do not harm the environment (Revlog, 2005). Reverse Logistics is a process whereby companies can become more environmentally efficient through recycling, reusing and reducing the amount of materials used. Viewed narrowly, it can be thought of as the reverse distribution of materials among channel members. A more holistic view of Reverse Logistics includes the reduction of materials in the forward system in such a way that fewer materials flow back, reuse of materials is possible and recycling is facilitated”.

The fact of reducing materials used in the processes is according to some authors (Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 1998) considered as Green Logistics and not Reverse Logistics, although the same authors agree in that the bound line between both concepts is not always clear. On the other hand, Carter and Ellram seem to keep tight to the same channel in which the forward flow was generated, against the more broad view in which other companies outside the business chain could be favored from the returns flows.

The Company offers a suite of integrated reverse logistics and repair solutions that are operated on globally consistent processes. With its suite of end-to-end solutions, the Company can manage its customers' reverse logistics requirements while also providing critical feedback of data to their supply chain constituents while delivering continuous improvement and efficiencies for both existing and new generation products. Its reverse logistics and repair solutions include returns management, exchange programs, complex repair, asset recovery, recycling and e-waste management.

The Company provides repair expertise to multiple product lines, such as consumer and midrange products, printers, personal digital assistants (PDA), mobile phones, consumer medical devices, notebooks, PC's, set-top boxes, game consoles and infrastructure products. With its service parts logistics business, the Company manages all of the logistics and restocking processes essential to the operation of repair and refurbishment services. The integration of reverse logistics operations inside the logistics effort of the corporation should be the first step in the process of corporate-wide integration.

In the case of Flextronics, create a center of attention senior management attention and support look like to be the hardest task concerning returns. Mapping out the reverse logistics program and identifying the various departments directly or indirectly concerned in returns handling can prove to be a valuable inventiveness. Clear tasks must be assigned to accounting, sales, finance, marketing, etc. regarding increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the reverse logistics program. Flextronics in Channel Management The role of Flextronics in Channel Management has been considered as an important competitiveness factor of other companies.

This is especially important for the electronics industry given the high perish ability of its products and the complexity of its distribution channel. These factors combined make critical the relation between the members of the distribution channel. The world economy is becoming borderless and integrated, driven by global market forces, global technological forces, global cost forces and political and macro-economic forces. The integrated world economy and global competitive arena is changing the way in which companies traditionally operated.

There is also geographical, functional and sectored integration, which gives a truly global playing field to the companies and results in channel management. Therefore Channel Management is playing vital role in Global competitiveness. To conclude the practical implications, channel management’s tasks and behavior seem, on the surface, to be similar to traditional management. However, the difference in the form of a SCO as a starting point for the management is considerable. To acquire a proper SCO, the SCM literature suggests that a major change in the mindset must be achieved.

To become best practice in SCM performance is therefore not easily achieved. However, SCM seems to be a promising strategy for many companies when considering the best practice companies’ profitability and growth, and this dissertation can hopefully give practitioners some advice about improved SCM performance.

References

1. Barry, J. Girard, G. ;amp; Perras, C. (1993), Logistics planning shifts into reverse. Journal of European Business, Vol. 5, No 1, pp. 34–38.
2. Business Dictionary (2012) Definition-What is logistics management? And its role in the business Available at: http://www. usinessdictionary. com/definition/logistics-management. html#ixzz2Ar3FkYOr [Accessed on: 1st November, 2012]
3. Flextronics (2010-2011) Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility Program Sustainability Report: Flextronics Supplier CSER Program Overview pp. 64-68
4. Hawks, Karen. VP Supply Chain Practice, Navesink. (2006) Reverse Logistics Magazine Available at: http://www. rlmagazine. com/edition01p12. php [Accessed on: 17th October, 2012]
5. Melissen F. W. ;amp; A. J. de Ron (1999), Defining recovery practices – definitions and terminology, International Journal on Environmentally

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