Supply Chain Design Paper

Supply Chain Design Paper

Introduction

Company Overview

Dr. Riordan, a successful professor of chemistry who had achieved several exclusive rights in transforming the polymers into the plastic of very high tensile power, started a plastic company in the year 1991. Soon after its establishment, the firm purchased a plant of fan production, which is situated, in Pontiac. Later, the company was named Riordan Manufacturing Inc, after working on its current exclusive rights for one complete year. It was in the year 1993, when the firm stretched out in the business of manufacturing, the plastic containers of beverages, and for this purpose it purchased the manufacturing plant in the city of Albany. The firm also entered in the business of manufacturing custom plastic parts and in the year 2000 firm penetrated in China by shifting the fan production over there. Today, Riordan manufacturing is plastic producers operating on the global level with more than 500 employees working in the firm, contributing their efforts for the revenue of more than $46 million. The firm wholly falls under the ownership of Riordan Industries, which is listed, in the Fortune 1000 with earnings of more than $ 1 Billion (Riordan Manufacturing.com, 2013).

Discussion

Company manufacturing strategy and its benefit

Currently, Riordan manufacturing is involved in the production of several different products such as electric fans, plastic bottles and customized plastic parts. For electric fans, the firm is using level strategy where it anticipate the demand of fans all over the world including America and then produce the fans to meet that calculated demand. For, plastic bottles the firm is using the combination of chase and make to order production strategy. The third product, which is the, customized plastic parts and components, is produced by the firm using chase and assemble to stock strategy. The firm stockpiles a large amount of inventory which is use to produce the customized parts in order to respond the customers' order as soon as possible. In a nutshell Riordan manufacturing is using a combination of several different strategies of production for different product (Riordan Manufacturing.com, 2013).

From the different strategies of production, the first strategy Riordan using is chase strategy. There are several advantages of this strategy. Chase strategy cuts down the inventory cost due to which the capital saved can be used in the purchasing of other raw materials or any other operation of the firm, secondly, the chase strategy also saves the warehousing cost which needs to be spent in order to store the raw materials and goods. Other advantages include that the leveling strategy helps the firm to anticipate the cost and expenses which needs to be spent in the production of the product, in advance. Next comes the make to order strategy, which helps the firm, to avoid the stocking of the inventory, another most important advantage of this strategy is the specialization (Hamlett.K, 2013).

Process Flow Diagram for Electrical Fan Supply Chain

Metrics for Evaluating the Performance of Electric Fan Supply Chain

The two metrics, which are suitable, to ...