(Contains 10 resources)
Content Type: cases
Publisher: Wits Business School (2011)
By June 2010, The Coca-Cola Company's (Coca-Cola) micro distribution centre (MDC) network in Africa had proven to be incredibly successful. Coca-Cola had built up the network to distribute its products through small, independent local entrepreneurs to even smaller outlets, enabling the company to reach markets that traditionally had been very difficult to access. Now social marketers were approaching Coca-Cola for permission to distribute their own products using the MDC network. Paul Fourie, group strategy and business planning director of Coca-Cola Eurasia and Africa, soon had to present his recommendations to Coca-Cola and its bottlers – and wondered what he should suggest as the way forward.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals (2017)
Services and information technology (IT) are dominating the current global economy. Due to the increasing involvement of IT in service operations, a new type of service supply chain (SSC) has emerged, namely the IT-enabled SSC. The present case is intended to reveal the insights of service management in such a new supply chain. Through the example of TeleSP, a northern European telecommunications and IT service provider with a complex supply chain, readers are invited to discover the unique characteristics of the IT-enabled SSC, and to view the challenges in running it.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: The Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame (2006)
The new CEO of Citigroup, Charles Prince, proposes a Five Point Ethics Plan in an attempt to change the ethics, culture and operations of the company. The plan is a response to significant regulatory scrutiny, paying out massive legal settlements and a Federal Reserve announcement requiring the company to refrain from mergers and acquisitions until it has cleaned up internal controls. His plan includes expanded training, enhanced focus on talent, balanced performance appraisals, improved communications and strengthened compliance controls. As current key executives leave the company and experts in ethics are skeptical, many wonder if Citigroup will be able to successfully communicate this program while it holds back on growth to implement this new culture.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: The Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame (2009)
The pet food poisoning scare of 2007, in which numerous pet food products were contaminated with melamine sourced from China, seriously damaged many of the afflicted firms’ reputations for safety and customer concern. Pet food industry leader Nestlé Purina released two unapologetic statements revealing limited information about the source of the problem and its impact on consumers. Purina must recover its customers’ collective faith; a difficult task after causing thousands of “deaths in the family.” It is also essential that Purina restructure its supply chain to ensure that history does not repeat itself.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: The Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame (2016)
In late 2015, Chipotle Mexican Grill experienced a large-scale food safety crisis. The company’s restaurants were identified as the source of an E. Coli outbreak that affected 14 states and led to more than 20 hospitalizations. Known for its Food With Integrity initiative, and having experienced a decade of explosive growth, the company’s livelihood was being threatened by the design of its own supply chain. Customers were scared, and the issue had attracted the attention of investors, regulators, and the national news media; Chipotle needed to respond.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: The Berkeley-Haas Case Series. University of California, Berkeley. Haas School of Business (2012)
This case study focuses on a sustainability corporate initiative that aims to strengthen a photovoltaic business and to understand consumer preferences. The case analyzes the process of how a photovoltaic panel company decides to look beyond its manufacturing facility and understand the potential environmental impact of its supply chain and improve its sustainability performance. This case illustrates how renewable energy companies (such as a solar photovoltaic company) can revise its operations, lower its carbon footprint, and incorporate sustainability criteria into its strategy. Students are asked to evaluate the carbon footprint of Han Solar’s manufacturing and distribution operations and to decide further actions considering other factors such as cost and delivery time.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: NeilsonJournals Publishing (2006)
Wal-Mart received widespread praise for its response to Hurricane Katrina when it hit the Louisiana coast in August 2005 and low prices at the world’s largest retailer are estimated to save consumers billions of dollars a year. Nonetheless, it was coming under increasing criticism for core business practices, ranging from detrimental effects on communities when Wal-Mart stores are established, to abusive labour practices, to alleged sourcing from sweatshops. This case looks at the benefits and the potentially harmful consequences of the Wal-Mart business model. The focus is on supply chain issues and, more specifically, a lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) charging that Wal-Mart failed to meet contractual obligations specified in its Standards for Suppliers Agreement. However, the retailer must respond to a range of criticisms that chief executive Lee Scott recognizes are harming its reputation. Scott asks, in reference to Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina, “what would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?” More fundamentally, the case asks, how sustainable is Wal-Mart’s business model?
Content Type: cases
Publisher: NeilsonJournals Publishing (2011)
Armour Plastics Company is a family-owned corporation that manufactures small-size plastic bottles in the Philippines. It began being professionally managed only about two years ago. “Cat” Avellana, an engineer with graduate training in business, had been successful in turning the company around but now wanted his subordinate managers to take on even greater roles themselves in managing the firm. He thought the key to the success of this initiative was their reorientation from functional management to process management. Cat himself was trained on strategic operations thinking – structuring his management approach around key operations issues categorized as having either strategic, operational, or tactical impact especially on productivity. Recent exposure to process management, however, has Cat convinced that Armour is ready for the next phase. This case is envisioned as serving as an end-of-term case in an undergraduate course or as an introductory case at the graduate level.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: NeilsonJournals Publishing (2015)
This case presents a detailed account of the efforts of a large Danish manufacturing company to introduce a sustainability agenda in its global supply chain operations. The aim of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the cross-functional coordination and integration, governance mechanisms, and operational practices related to introducing a highly ambitious sustainability agenda in a supply chain.
Content Type: cases
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc. (2017)
This case illustrates how firms should formulate and implement global operations and supply chain strategies for risk management to alleviate disruptions to their operations and supply chains from natural disasters or safety and security problems. The fact that only 10% of businesses have contingency plans in place to cope with operations and supply chain disruptions despite the likelihood of disasters means disaster planning/risk management should be an essential part of their supply chain strategy.
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