Meditech is facing issues with on-time delivery of surgical equipment to customers. They are currently delivering products over six weeks late. This is unacceptable in their industry where timely delivery is important. The key causes are a bullwhip effect in the supply chain from poor demand forecasting, long lead times, and frequent new product introductions. Communication issues between departments also contribute to distorted information and panic ordering from distributors.
Challenges
Inaccurate forecasts of retailer demand has become a major issue at Obermeyer. The two major factors that made this task more difficult was the increase in product variety and intense competition in market. Second challenge the company had faced was to allocate production between Hong Kong and China. Although Obermeyer had 1/3 of Parka production in China for 1992, this year the organization insisted on increasing the sales to half. There was difference in quality and labor rate at China and Hong Kong which made allocation decision more difficult.
Another challenge the company faced was the larger lead time. The company had supplies of raw materials from various countries which resulted in delayed production time. Organization challenges along with competition from competitor companies were major challenges the company had faced.
Analysis
From the sales predictions that the six managers forecasted, a coefficient of variation (COV) was determined, which indicated the level of spread of the forecasted data. The COV values were broadly divided into two levels, the low risk group and the high risk group. Every value below 0.2 were considered to be among the lower risk items and all the items above COV value of 0.2 were considered to be of higher risks. Once the risk levels of each item were determined, the quantities of items to be produced in first and second production cycles could be calculated with least risk. 70% of the entire sales forecast for the lower risk items were ordered to be produced. Only 30% of higher risk items were ordered to be produced in the first production cycle. The quantities which amounted to 1200 were manufactured in China and that which were close to 600, were manufactured in Hong Kong in the first production cycle.
Once the 80% of the orders were received from the retailers from the Vegas show, a clear picture of the demand forecast could be obtained, according to which the rest of the items could be manufactured either in China or Hong Kong. Referring to exhibit 1, the four products to be produced in China in the first production cycle are: Assault, Seduced, Entice and Electra. These four products have COV less than 0.2. However Gail, Daphne, ISIS, Anita, Teri, Stephanie are produced in Hong Kong for the first production cycle as they have a high level of risk associated with it.
Conclusion
Short term operational changes
o Decrease lead time by obtaining raw materials from geographically closer locations to ensure timely delivery
Long term operational changes
o Cross scaling Chinese labors which would help the company produce quality and reliable goods at a cheaper price
Challenges
Inaccurate forecasts of retailer demand has become a major issue at Obermeyer. The two major factors that made this task more difficult was the increase in product variety and intense competition in market. Second challenge the company had faced was to allocate production between Hong Kong and China. Although Obermeyer had 1/3 of Parka production in China for 1992, this year the organization insisted on increasing the sales to half. There was difference in quality and labor rate at China and Hong Kong which made allocation decision more difficult.
Another challenge the company faced was the larger lead time. The company had supplies of raw materials from various countries which resulted in delayed production time. Organization challenges along with competition from competitor companies were major challenges the company had faced.
Analysis
From the sales predictions that the six managers forecasted, a coefficient of variation (COV) was determined, which indicated the level of spread of the forecasted data. The COV values were broadly divided into two levels, the low risk group and the high risk group. Every value below 0.2 were considered to be among the lower risk items and all the items above COV value of 0.2 were considered to be of higher risks. Once the risk levels of each item were determined, the quantities of items to be produced in first and second production cycles could be calculated with least risk. 70% of the entire sales forecast for the lower risk items were ordered to be produced. Only 30% of higher risk items were ordered to be produced in the first production cycle. The quantities which amounted to 1200 were manufactured in China and that which were close to 600, were manufactured in Hong Kong in the first production cycle.
Once the 80% of the orders were received from the retailers from the Vegas show, a clear picture of the demand forecast could be obtained, according to which the rest of the items could be manufactured either in China or Hong Kong. Referring to exhibit 1, the four products to be produced in China in the first production cycle are: Assault, Seduced, Entice and Electra. These four products have COV less than 0.2. However Gail, Daphne, ISIS, Anita, Teri, Stephanie are produced in Hong Kong for the first production cycle as they have a high level of risk associated with it.
Conclusion
Short term operational changes
o Decrease lead time by obtaining raw materials from geographically closer locations to ensure timely delivery
Long term operational changes
o Cross scaling Chinese labors which would help the company produce quality and reliable goods at a cheaper price
The case study optimizes the HP DeskJet printer supply chain by redesigning the network using component commonality and risk pooling. The redesign leads to considerable savings to the business.
Home Work Chapter 1 to 12: Book Reference: Simchi-Levi, D., Kaminsky, P., and...Shaheen Sardar
Home Work Chapter 1 to 12:
Book Reference: Simchi-Levi, D., Kaminsky, P., and Simchi-Levi, E., & (2008). Designing and managing the supply chain: Concepts, strategies, and cases (3rd edition). United-States: McGraw-Hill.
Presentation gives the idea of old supply chain of CISCO with the new digitized supply chain. Write down by CISCO and the Bullwhip effect is also explained. Relationship of suppliers and partners is also described in the presentation.
The case study optimizes the HP DeskJet printer supply chain by redesigning the network using component commonality and risk pooling. The redesign leads to considerable savings to the business.
Home Work Chapter 1 to 12: Book Reference: Simchi-Levi, D., Kaminsky, P., and...Shaheen Sardar
Home Work Chapter 1 to 12:
Book Reference: Simchi-Levi, D., Kaminsky, P., and Simchi-Levi, E., & (2008). Designing and managing the supply chain: Concepts, strategies, and cases (3rd edition). United-States: McGraw-Hill.
Presentation gives the idea of old supply chain of CISCO with the new digitized supply chain. Write down by CISCO and the Bullwhip effect is also explained. Relationship of suppliers and partners is also described in the presentation.
Retailers today are faced with unprecedented challenges ranging from shifting retail formats, overabundance of consumer choice, fast-changing technology, greater focus on quality and price to a tough economic climate. The result is that those who are not constantly innovating run the risk of falling behind. This white paper looks at the top five supply chain challenges that retailers face today and maps out a series of strategies to address these challenges based on research and direct experience in supporting retailers to maintain a competitive advantage in a highly competitive market.
EU Medical Device Regulation: Preparing for Disruptive (yet Incomplete) Regu...YourEncoreInc
The new EU Medical Device Regulation (MDR) represents one of the most disruptive changes to impact the global medical technology sector in recent times.
But with the regulations not finalized, three years to comply, and overall fatigue on the topic, what are the appropriate steps companies should take today to prepare?
In this session, Minnie Baylor-Henry and Jon Lange will briefly outline the current state of EU MDR, its likely impact to medtech company strategy and compliance requirements, and provide appropriate steps companies should take today to prepare.
About Minnie Baylor-Henry, J.D.: Minnie Baylor-Henry, J.D. is a Strategic Advisor to YourEncore and the Medical Devices Practice Lead. Prior to assuming her current role in 2015, she was the Worldwide Vice-President for Regulatory Affairs for Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) Medical Devices & Diagnostics business.
About Jon Lange: Jon Lange is a Principal in the Advisory Services practice of EY and its EU MDR lead. He has spent 25+ years leading strategic growth initiatives and business transformation change programs for large and mid-tier life science companies.
Week 4 Dis 1Please respond to the following Brand Stretch .docxmelbruce90096
Week 4
Dis 1
Please respond to the following: "Brand Stretch Spectrum and Market Product Grid"
· Assess the importance of evaluating newly developed health care products in order to determine whether the products should carry existing brand names or whether they should be assigned new brand names. Suggest realistic branding strategies needed for marketers to evaluate newly developed health care products or services. Provide support for your rationale.
· From the e-Activity, determine whether or not the product offerings that you selected are consistent with the perceived selections of the given health care entity. Explain your rationale.
2 page
Dis 2
Please respond to the following: "Lateral Marketing Strategy"
· Assess the value of target marketing as an effective health care marketing strategy. Appraise the degree to which vertical and traditional segmentation help marketing managers use target marketing strategies. Support your rationale with at least two (2) specific examples of target marketing within a health care organization with which you are familiar.
· Evaluate the impact of lateral segmentation in encouraging marketing managers to look broadly at markets in order to identify previously overlooked opportunities. Provide at least one (1) specific example of quality initiatives within a health care organization.
2 page
Week 5
Dis 1
· Please respond to the following: "Marketing Segment and Perceptual Map"
· Evaluate the value and utility afforded by Philip Kotler’s Segment-by-Segment Invasion Plan as a tool for mapping current and future market segment pursuits. Provide support for your rationale.
· Assess the importance of a Perceptual Map for current and potential product offerings in the marketplace. Suggest one (1) way in which this instrument can be used by marketers to affect better product positioning outcomes within the health care industry.
2 page
Dis 2
Please respond to the following: "Product Ladder and Hierarchy of Needs"
· Assess the importance of the Ries and Trout’s Product Ladder as a target marketing device within the health care industry. Provide a rationale for your response.
· Assess the level of necessity for health care marketers to possess an effective understand of human motivation in order to better understand their customers. Provide at least two (2) specific examples of the use of human motivation within a health care organization.
2 page
Week 6
Dis 1
Please respond to the following: "Diffusion of Innovation"
· Per the text, health care consumers vary in their willingness to adopt new product offerings, with some being quicker to adopt than others. Suggest the key reasons why you believe these variances exist. Provide a rationale with at least (1) example of a situation or scenario that would support your response.
· Assess the importance of Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation Model as a tool for understanding the product adoption tendencies of health care consumer. Provide at least two (2) specific.
It deals with every basic entity in an array of Supply Chain Web/Network which gives a detailed explanation that will help a candidate or a learner to understand the concept of Supply Chain Management.
McKinsey Sağlık Tedarik Zinciriyle, FMCG Tedarik Zinciri karşılaştırıyor. Sağlık Tedarik Zincirindeki iyileştirme fırsatına ve toplumsal boyutuna dikkat çekiyor.
Deactivated
Kelie Hein
3 posts
Re:Topic 1 DQ 1
Two GCU library scholarly databases that will help me find the best research articles for my proposal are two databases that I appreciate, and currently use often: CINAHL Complete and PubMed. I like CINAHL Complete because it is quite specific to nursing. It also provides many full text articles free of charge, which is unfortunately not that common. Some databases provide only abstracts, and some require one to purchase the article (which can be 50 dollars!). I like PubMed because it has a wide array of health science articles that are peer-reviewed, but often have language that is easier to understand. PubMed is also quite user friendly.
These two databases are better than Google Scholar and/or a general internet search, for several reasons. While Google Scholar provides scholarly articles, it can sometimes be difficult to limit the search. Inexperienced users an easily become overwhelmed with the amount of data the search returns. A general internet search is not only daunting in terms of qualified research, but can be dangerous as well: Wikipedia sources, the evil of internet research, are often returned with general internet searches. Anyone can post on Wikipedia (and the internet in general). Scholarly databases are the safe way to go: safe for the researcher, and safe for the patients under the researcher’s
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Strategies That Facilitate Influencing Power
AcelRx Pharmaceuticals Inc Company
STRATEGIES THAT FACILITATE INFLUENCING POWER
Acel Rx Pharmaceuticals Inc. has always provided quality service to its clients but the adoption of an online drugstore is a project that could make the services even better. However, various measures have to be put into place to facilitate the success of the project.
Strategies to Adapt Organizational Change
To adopt the online marketing and networking with customers then the Acel Rx Pharmaceuticals Inc. has to undergo some organizational change. Though the internet is the Internet could enable profound changes in the nature and structure of the healthcare industry and, ultimately, the delivery of healthcare services its adaptions should be strategic. First, there is need to carry out the change in phases with the start-up phase being clarifying the expectations and roles, assessing readiness, contracts and getting buy-in. In this phase is usually where the relationship between you (the initial change agent) and your client starts, whether you are an external or internal consultant. This means that Acel has to establish who its clients actually are, define the project conduct field research on the opinions of the customers after which they have to make the customers feel the problem at hand and the need to adopt this new technology which is aimed at making things better. It is important that the change agent should have good communication skills both verbal and non-verbal and a good listener.
Second in line is a jo.
The opportunities for the Indian pharmaceutical industry are immense but increasing competition, increasing regulatory pressures and stringent price control means that companies need to constantly improve their costs and service levels. Supply chain efficiencies will play a crucial role going forward and will become the key differentiator for companies. Companies will therefore need to adopt an approach that encompasses strategic, tactical and operational interventions to remain competitive and create value for their customers
1. MBA OPERATIONS
Meditech Surgical Case
Group III
Ankur Verma
Arvinderpal Singh
Balvinder Singh
Bhavya Pabby
Bhupesh Singh
Bhupinder Kumar
Jasdeep Bedi
Ishwar Devgan
2. Introduction
Meditech is a leader in the endoscopic surgical instrument market. The company
manufactures and market low cost endoscopy surgical equipment to hospitals and
independent surgeons. The company’s distribution operation is arranged and managed from a
central storage warehouse that ships its products to domestic and international affiliates. The
organization have been experiencing a good customer service experience in the past,
however, lately customers have expressed concerns with the time products are being
delivered to them. Due to the nature of the industry, the delivery of surgical equipment on
time is extremely important. The on time delivery of products to its customers has become
the main problem for the firm. Currently, Meditech’s customers are waiting over six weeks
for products to be delivered to them. This current practice is not acceptable and must be
addressed by management immediately if Meditech wants to stay competitive and keep its
current market share.
Statement and Causes of the problem
Meditech’s main problem is that a bullwhip effect was produced due to organizational and
supply chain problems. The method used by Meditech to balance customer demands with
planned production is not effectively serving its purpose. The catalogue of products being
offered by Meditech continues to grow and replacing current items, making obsolete old
products that are in their catalogue and current customer orders. Poor customer demands
forecasting, long assembly lead times, and changing products are the main reason why
inventory levels are not enough to satisfy customer’s demands. While the assembly lines try
3. to keep with demand and company’s resources are getting exhausted trying to launch a new
product, the distributors then will increase their product demand, which causes a bottle neck
effect as it moves up the supply chain process. As the initial demand slows down there are
still backup of high demand of inventory being produced. This cycle would repeat again as
new products are being released to the market. Due to these problems, Meditech supply chain
and management has created a poor customer service.
Another problem of Meditech is communication. There is not enough communication
between main operations departments in the company; this is causing information to become
distorted as it makes its way through the supply chain line. The lack of communication and
information increases the firm’s lead to demand variation as orders or demand is being
process through the supply chain systems and departments. In consequence, distributors are
feeling the effect by long waiting periods of time, thus this also causes them to place larger
orders in an effort to help them compensate the waiting time. Panic ordering by distributors is
caused by lack of communication and in turn leads into the problem of the bullwhip effect.
Meditech’s current distribution system is inefficient and obviously is causing an inflated
demand of products. There is not enough information being shared among distributors and
Meditech’s operations. Each distributor receives orders from different regional warehouse,
which makes it hard to see the bullwhip effect. The organization’s forecasting system is also
confronting serious problems. The current organization’s forecast system is determined by
marketing and finance departments on an annual basis. The annual forecast is then broken
down into monthly and weekly forecasts and is frequently adjusted by Central Planners
according to market trends. Meditech has realized that leads to forecasting problems when
they try to introduce new products. The organization realizes that they are unable to
effectively predict demand for new products, which causes large demand fluctuations and
backorders.
4. Decision Criteria & Alternative solutions + Recommended Solution,
Implementation and Justification
Meditech can try few alternatives process to reduce demand variation and the possibility of
panic ordering. The company should improve how customer ordering is processed, they
should more effectively share demand information, and increase lead times on new products.
The forecast methods needs to be upgraded to reflect current needs, the company should also
introduce vendor managed inventory and an e-commerce web site to share information with
its customers. All of these functions should be centralized and shared among all of the supply
chain channels that are involved. With improvements in forecasting it would be much
cheaper and more efficient with the introduction of new products to stock finished goods
inventory based on projected forecasts. By pushing products int
is anticipating the fluctuations in demands that may be caused with the introduction of a new
product. Meditech will now have products available exactly when the customer needs them,
and will no longer be forced into back order. A push strategy will also allow Meditech to be
more confident in their inventory policies and should allow them to lower their current
inventory policy to a level that is more economical and feasible.
Q1) Meditech’s problem in introducing new products. In manufacturing ALL products.
Meditech introduces 1 new product per month on an average. Most of the new products are
only upgrades of old products. This considerably reduces the life-cycle of the products.
Majority of Meditech customers are Material Managers whose primary focus is on cost and
delivery schedules but not on innovative product features. Though no major problems arise
5. from assembly line perspective, signs of cognitive dissonance may arise in customers. No
attempt is made by Meditech to understand the Demand Dynamics along the product life-
cycle. Qualitative factors that have been identified as critical success drivers for a new
product launch are time-to-market relative to competition or product diffusion. But Meditech
does not launch new products relative to competition and by constantly pushing new
innovations into the market it does not allow its products to diffuse effectively into the
market. Every new product launch requires a lead time of around 5-19 weeks (excluding
design phase lead time) which is very high. With every product launch, pushing the product
into the market becomes the primary consideration of the sales force thereby neglecting
customer service for older products. These constant launches have led to:
• Supply side shortages
• Delayed deliveries (6 weeks)
• Low customer service
• Low customer satisfaction
• Inaccurate forecasts
• High FG inventory levels
The product portfolio of Meditech comprises about 200 separate end-products and the
number is increasing. These wide ranges of products make Meditech rely heavily on suppliers
wherein the lead time is 2-16 weeks. So practising JIT, which would be very effective for
Meditech, becomes impossible in this case. Meditech organizational structure has a long
scalar chain. Information dissemination becomes difficult here if there are too many products
in the portfolio.
6. Q2) Cause of the problems, systematically and organizationally
ISHIKAWA FISH-BONE DIAGRAM WAS USED TO DISSECT THE CAUSE AND
EFFECT
Q3) Why is customer service manager the first person to recognize the major issues?
The scalar chain from Customer Service Manager to the Customer Service Representative is
only of two steps. The representatives work in direct contact with dealers and affiliates and
are often in direct contact with hospital personnel i.e. their consumers. A general rule of
thumb is “If you want the best feedback, ask your consumers”. This network would have
proved effective for feedback-information flow. Mr. Dan Franklin himself held many
meetings with hospital material managers. This brought forth the level of dissatisfaction
amongst his customers, Meditech’s poor service levels and improper delivery schedules.
7. Q4) How would you fix these problems?
The foremost thing we would do is implement an ERP System costing around $100,000. This
would help in better data storage & warehousing, analysis and forecasting. We would reduce
the frequency of new product launches. We would prefer a leaner product portfolio. We
would lay emphasis on better forecasts with a shorter horizon of 1-2 months. We would
maintain a safety stock so as to provide a service level of 95%. We would work to reduce the
assembly cycle time from the current level of 2 weeks. We would look for new and better
supplier relations to reduce the supplier lead time from the current level of 2-16 weeks.
References
1. (Bass 1969, Krishnan 2000)
2. (Porter 1985, Kailash and Lilien 1986)