OPM500 CASE Mod 4 Business & Marketing Essay Paper

Nissan Company Tsunami Disaster in 2011
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OPM500 CASE MOD 4
Introduction
In March, 2011, Nissan Company suffered a tsunami disaster which almost brought the company to its knees. About 5 staff as well as their 17 family members died in the damaging 9.0 magnitude tsunami and earthquake, with over 50 parts suppliers and dealerships destroyed as production throughout Japan closed totally (Greimel, 2011). This essay will present the earthquake and tsunami impact on Nissan company.
Earthquake and Tsunami Impact on Nissan
Q1. The company took four responses to the disaster that enabled it to survive the disaster. The actions included action empowerment, supply allocation, production management and information sharing.
Firstly, the gathering and sharing of information became decentralized as well as collaborative. Every area was required take two representatives to Japan to collect data and provide solutions to enable the corporation as a whole to carry out collaborative effort with input and details from all areas. Information gathering and sharing costs appeared normal as minimal resources were utilized to take the representatives and maintain them in this task. But, the benefits were noticeable. With domestic regional representatives in the center of company-wide decisions, the areas that were significantly impacted were offered priority first over other areas that were considered less impacted thereby reducing the whole company’s effect of the disaster. The sharing of information and resolutions offered assurance to the company to empower actions, manage production and allocate supplies to the areas that had much needs. Therefore, there was accurate flow of information as well as resolutions that showed actual needs.
Supply allocations had significant benefits. The decline of sales income was avoided from converting to idle inventories when regions not affected allocated their provisions to higher profit vehicles (Copeland & Hall, 2011). This was realized owing to areas that produced low profit vehicles gave up their GPS units to areas that could utilize units required for higher profit vehicles. This enabled the company realize great revenue generation, most likely in Yen millions in place of declining sales by the delay of manufacturing of higher profit vehicles. The related costs were giving up of good sales characteristics of lower profit vehicles to promote great revenue advantages that were acquired from high profit vehicles.
Managing production suffered low incremental expenses together with seen benefits. The company took slow production lines as well as increased in-stock as well as in-transit inventories to forecast challenges. This enabled the company to avoid ordinary amount of parts from supporting idling inventory and needing housing as well as sitting costs. Also, Nissan lowered costly overtime relating to normal production levels. Looking at in-transit inventory time to identify supply options possibly saved money. Air freight as well as other fast transportation costs would have been expensive compared to other sea shipments.
Empowering activities made the company flexible to allow area management make decisions fast without ...