SMAC Self Directed Managerial Application Component Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

SMAC Self Directed Managerial Application Component Case Study Solution

Proposition 03: SMAC technologies have a positive impact on creativity and innovation.

After taking into account the effects of SMAC technologies on the supply chain competitive innovation and productivity, it is to state that the SMAC is an emerging and effective technology that help the companies to grow and compete with market rivals. All in all, ABC Company would be benefited if it deploys the SMAC technologies to address the supply chain challenges and issues.

Ethical and Social Responsibility Related to Supply Chain Challenges

In essence, the supply chain ethics and social responsibility are integral. The businesses need to have a closer look over what they are and what are the ways to maintain their operations. It is to state that the lack of ethics and social responsibility can negatively impact the growth and productivity of the company and can minimize the market share as well.

At workplace, it has been identified and evaluated on the basis of the poor employee performance, stagnant growth and reduced productivity that the employees are not dedicated to their work, also they don’t show their sense of responsibility towards company and environment. The employees and staff do not value the work that is given to them and continuously fail to achieve their set targets, due to which the productivity and growth of the company can be negatively affected.

In addition, as the workers and staff do not possess ethical behaviors and have failed to promote ethical environment at workplace due to which there is a constant threat on the company of failing to decrease the maintenance cost to the remarkable extent. The main factor confiding the company to have low maintenance cost is the attitude of its employees or staff who despite of having a full awareness of their responsibilities and duties towards the company, do not realize or make efforts to bring a positive environment to the company. They constantly cause damage to the equipment and the machineries in the office due to their irresponsible ways of using them. They should have a realization that these machineries and equipment are costly and valuable to the companies and if they keep causing damage to these equipment it would not only affect the company but will also affect them in the long run.

Not only this, ABC company has not been taking advices of the staff or employees in the big decision due to which employees have stopped respecting and supporting the decisions of the company to go ahead with its new strategies or decisions. The company hasn’t valued its employees’ ideas which has discouraged and demotivated the employees to a larger extent.

ABC Company has been lacking productivity at workplace due to an inefficient team. The team members have not been working in a responsible way due to which the company has failed to achieve its targets. The team members have not been working for the benefit of company but they worked with no motivation just to get their paychecks which has been causing multiple errors in their functionalities. This is a negative signal which indicates that the company would not sustain in variable market conditions for a very long period of time. Since, the employee or staff are less dedicated or not sufficiently motivated towards their work and have not been figuring out their responsibility and values towards the environment, which means that the company has very badly failed to attract the bigger customer base.

The ability of employees or staff with professional ethics in the workplace is the master key to the lock of business growth and success. The team of trust worthy, reliable, understanding, responsible and concern and motivated individuals would have allowed to adapt themselves into any kind of work, position or challenges they face or are confronted with. Since, the company has not been systematic and has failed to be well managed because of the lack of mutual understanding between the employees and the authorities resulting in the absence of ethical values in employees. For such reason the company faces a great restriction in its way of success.

On the other hand, the lack of social responsibility initiatives has reduced the profitability of the company, resulting in the lower value of the company in the marketplace which has further resulted in lower sales, reduced employees’ loyalty and a massive failure to attract the better personnel to company. Since, the CSR initiative’s focus on the sustainability issues may improve the efficiencies and lower cost as well.

In addition to this, being an irresponsible and unsustainable business made its easier for the business to retain existing employee or staff and recruit new employees. As the company has full entitlement to fire the employees who are no longer beneficial to the company and instead of being beneficial are causing harm to the company’s internal machineries and its image. Due to the lack of CSR initiatives, the company has not been successful enough to build a reputation as a responsible business, which has restrained the company to have competitive advantage in both short run and long run.

Also, the company has lost various benefits of CSR initiative and Ethical responsibilities which includes;

Better brand recognition.
Positive reputation of business.
Competitive advantage.
Operational cost savings.
Reduced innovation.
Organizational success and growth.
Increased customer loyalty and sales.
Greater ability to retain staff and attract talent.
Better financial performance.
Reduced productivity.

To sum up, it is to conclude that the company has not been able to implement the environment friendly practices or policies in the workplace and weak ethical identity as well as lack of professional and personal ethics have lead the company to negative financial results, thus reducing the economic performance of company. It is imperative to note that the employees prefer to work where they would be treated with fairness, dignity and respect. The companies with high customer satisfaction level tend to generate substantial market share and attain great customer loyalty. The businesses that maintain good relationship with other companies and government authorities and contribute to their community tend to be more successful in the long run.

Assessment of Management Abilities

Since, the company went through variety of supply chain challenges or issues, it is to determine that the supply chain manager technical competencies and knowledge areas are repressing the abilities, skills and knowledge needed by supply chain managers to overcome challenges.

Performance trader off

The management should be able to design an efficient, responsive and agile supply chain that should have the ability to;

Deliver and manufacture a broad range of high quality services and products in varying volumes and in shortest reliable lead times in order to improve the services to its customers.
Meeting the diverse and changing needs of customers.
Delivering high quality products or service at low cost with short lead times.
Respond within an appropriate time frame and purposefully to customer changes and request in the marketplace.
Make products without wasting man hours, natural resources and materials.
Run the business operations while minimizing the carbon footprint and reducing the energy costs.

Planning and organizing
The supply chain managers should have ability to:

Effectively plan what the company requires to achieve and should involve all relevant members of staff.
Anticipate critical or important events, identify resource requirements as well as assign duties and responsibilities for the particular work including expectation of performances and deadlines.
Analyze situation, demonstrate use of techniques and identify implications for the purpose of making correct actions.
Demonstrate the ability and skill to monitor the progress, not only this, but also make required changes.
Make sure that the employees and staff are well aware of being accountable to achieve the desired and target results through individual performance appraisal and planned program evaluation.
Make sure that the employees are provided the essential tools in order to succeed.

Teamwork

Demonstrate the commitment to motivation and mission in order to combine the expertise and energy of the team to achieve the common objectives.
Understand the effective teamwork dynamics for the purpose of attaining the higher level of company’s growth and performance.
Determine the ability to work as part of the competent and tight-knit group.
Determine the commitment for the purpose of engaging the member of team in other divisions and department of the organization.

Conclusion

To sum up, it is concluded that the research has been done to find the impact of SMAC on the supply chain innovation, competitiveness and productivity. ABC Corporation, consumer packaged goods company has went through variety of supply chain problems which includes lower productivity, reduced marker share, low competitiveness, low innovation, low performance in the marketplace.

It is noteworthy that SMAC technologies have positive impact on competitiveness, innovation and productivity. ABC Company has addressed the supply chain problem by building an adaptive as well as an agile supply chain with integrated execution and rapid planning. The company has deployed the continuous fine-tune operations and dynamic planning capabilities to ensure the responsive agility to meet the changing customer demand.

In addition, the competitive advantage and product innovation have stemmed from the management and selection of technologies and suppliers. Also, the company has managed the processes, individuals or workers, information and decisions related to the product throughout its life cycle, due to which it has successfully achieved the market leadership and strong results within a shortest period of time. In addition, the company has integrated the planning of business with cloud technology that has connected operations as well as sales planning processes with business planning and has enabled the company to achieve the balance between demand and supply aligned with the strategic objectives of business. The company has kept the momentum by ensuring the consistent business improvement and growth through auditing, systematic measurement and knowledge measurement. Best practices, compliance audits and benchmarks have provided the company with a governing framework for the sustainable operation of supply chain.

Appendix A – Process Diagram