Management Coursework: Supply Chain Management

Exam 1
Student's Name
PENN STATE UNIVERSITY ABINGTON
FALL 2020
Subject: Supply Chain Management Topic: Exam I
Instructor: Dr. Joseph JangDue Date: 9/23/2020 @12:00 Midnight
PLEASE ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS. EACH IS WORTH 10 POINTS.
1a. Compare and contrast anticipatory and responsive business models. Why has responsiveness become popular in supply chain strategy and collaboration?
Anticipatory and responsive business models are geared towards the fulfillment of consumers' needs. The anticipatory business model entails forecasting or predicting the products that customers will need. The supplies produce those products after they predict base on the market. Anticipatory Logistics represents an exchange of information through technologies to determine reliable information regarding the anticipated customer's needs. It allows the suppliers to provide adequate service production to meets clients' expectations and needs. Such precision, forecast, or anticipation is achieved via data analysis of customer product or service searches, shopping narratives, and wish-lists, among others. The manufacturer or suppliers produces products by leveraging on market forecasts, distributors, and retailers' inventories. Most of the work in an Anticipatory Model directly links to the anticipation of future events, making the model highly risky for businesses. Anticipatory business models are likely to go wrong in some cases because there is uncertainty regarding products to produce or what the customer demands will be in the future. As a result, anticipatory business models in the supply chain may cause waste and losses.
However, a responsive business model is a solution to the uncertainty found in anticipatory business models. The responsive business model facilitates the rapid exchange and harmonization of the information between the stakeholders in the supply chain. The Responsive Business Model does not rely on forecasts, but it exploits planning, and data exchange amongst firms within the supply chain systems. It has a different sequence of events; for instance, it has selling activity as the first task instead of the anticipatory business model, which has forecasting as the starting activity.
The responsive business model is gaining popularity because it is a more customized and flexible model.the products can be customized at any given time to meet customers' needs. For example, tastes and sizes of the products can be altered to rhyme with clients' needs. This observation contrasts with the anticipatory business model of supply where may have limited freedom of choice regarding a product.
b. Describe one of the consumer disruptors, and one of the technology disruptors will impact supply chain design and strategy.
Pandemics like Coronavirus disease constitute critical disruptors in supply chains. Supply and logistical activities entail the mobility of products locally, nationally, and globally. When the COVID-19 disaster strike, the mobility of people and goods were significantly restricted, and this impacted negatively on the movement of goods from one place to another, which disrupted any form of product supply mode, or strategy.
2a. Discuss how blockchain and tracking systems provide value to a firm's customers.
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