PowerPoint Presentation: Global Supply Chain in the 21st Century

Global Supply Chain
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Global Supply Chain
Introduction
Over the turn of the 21st Century, there has been increasing interest over supply chain management both from an academic and real-life perspective. A global supply chain is “a series of firms networking and outsourcing throughout the globe” (Ibrahim, Zailani, & Tan, 2015, p. 1430). Global supply chains arose because of the advancement in globalization. More importantly, companies sought to create a competitive advantage through this process amidst stiff competition. Sourcing from low-cost nations was a necessary market response because the corporations would mitigate astronomical production costs in develop nations and expand their revenue growth through selling internationally.
Companies are continuously seeking strategies in which they can exploit the global supply chain to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. In this regard, it is very much likely that in the quest to attain more understanding on this topic, one will come across several concepts in global supply chain management (GSCM). These include the value chain concept as outlined by Michael Porter, the concept of GSCM, and international logistics, which encompasses global sourcing of commodities. Eventually, a more profound competitive advantage is attained. The GSCM is a broad and expansive discipline, which utilizes various concepts such as Michael Porter’s value chain, management, and international logistics to determine strategies to improve their competitive advantages through effective and efficient delivery of goods and services.
Michael Porter’s Value Chain Concept in GSCM
The popularity around Michael Porter and more so, his value chain concept has extended for over three decades. Porter, a professor at Harvard University, coined the term ‘value chain’ in his renowned book “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance” (1985). According to Sweeney (2009, p. 13),
“The idea of the value chain is based on the process view of organizations, the idea of seeing a manufacturing (or service) organization as a system, made up of subsystems each with inputs, the transformation of processes and outputs involve the acquisition and consumption of resources such as money, labor, materials, equipment, buildings, land, administration and management.”
This predisposition conveys the fact that it is a company’s costs and profits are predominantly dependent on how it conducts its value chain activities. In the simplest manner of expressing this concept, value is a collaborative effort. Every company desires to own the entire value chain, but even then some of these efforts may be futile because of the limited level of resources or minimal returns for the activities thereof. Nevertheless, the end-goal remains to provide value to the customer. In this regard, the meaning of value is derived from the customer’s perspective. According to Porter, the value would be “the amount a buyer is willing to pay for what a firm provides to them” (Ibrahim, 2015, p. 1457).
In the quest to ensure optimal customer sat...