Global Supply Chain Management Management Research Paper

Amazon Global Supply Chain Management
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Amazon Global Supply Chain Management
Amazon is among the greatest companies that have defined the revolution in globalization. This position arises from how the company does its operations and more importantly, how they perceive their business model. In the quest to pursue this excellence, Amazon has to analyze its source of competitive advantage, which in this case is in the operations resources and capabilities. To this end, the most effective plans for the firm have to be fathomed from this perspective. The model will take into account the company’s strategic planning including specific metrics such as facility-location problems, capacity sizing, sourcing strategies, and vertical integration policies. Besides, the decentralized purchasing delocalization strategy will facilitate the achievement of low material costs as well as labor, in which case there will be the transfer of both production and sourcing activities. The goal of this hypothetical decentralized purchasing delocalization model is to improve the company’s primary goal, which is profit maximization.
Hypothesis and Strategic Decision
First and foremost, the firm must adopt an activity-based approach whereby “a set of resources that, using a certain technology, transforms one or more inputs into one or more outputs” (Lambiase et al., 2015, p. 11). Amazon is quite well placed to leverage its technological position. Nevertheless, technological decisions go beyond the financial aspects to include other parameters such as flexibility, reliability, quality, and volume, which are internal elements and environmental laws, supplier technology, and customer needs, which are external factors (Shehabuddeen, 2006). Regular changes and improvements in technology should also be taken into account.
The supply chain (SC) design is realistic and thus, the demand and production charges are variable. Onwards, there is the case for primary strategic decisions relative to sourcing strategies, capacity-sizing, and facility-location. These metrics define Amazon’s optimal SC structure. Further, the structure articulates the number of facilities that will be operational. To this end, the value proposition will determine which ones are closed and/or opened. Further, the establishment of sites will be predicated on the number of specific goods ordered plus the concentration of customers. When it comes to the global output, the firm has to identify the most robust values that facilitate capacity-sizing decisions predicated on scenario analysis. On the other hand, sourcing decisions are linked to intricate supplier choice relative to their reliability, quality, and cost. In this case, the company has to choose the optimal number of suppliers it can have efficient and effective operations and also, purchased items per supplier depending on seasonal changes.
Investments
The primary determinant of investment costs for Amazon is highly predicated on the transfer of activities between facilities. The company decided to relocate its activities through the t...