Answer:
The short responses to the questions include references and in-text citations for the sources backing up the points.
Step-by-step explanation:
1. What is the critical issue(s) confronting WCC North America?
In accordance with the text: "Supply Chain Logistics Management,an in-depth study on firm’s supply chain strategy and operations of logistics, written by Donald J. Bowersox, 2013, among others, the critical issue confronting WCC North America deals with its lack of integration within its departments that is leading with customers´ "extreme dissatisfaction" when determining their orders status.
2. What changes, if any, should be initiated to address the critical issue(s)?
The text mentions a critical issue to be addressed which is the need to target customers´ satisfaction through an information system that identifies the company´s customers´ orders status, as "high-volume, key accounts" (Bowersox, 2013), to give customers a more efficient responsive.
3. Identify the risks and benefits of your proposed changes from the perspective of
(a) WCC North America corporate management, and (b) WCC North America line distribution management, that is their leaders in general, are facing the huge pressure of becoming globalized and competing with a low-cost producer, dealing with the fact that (c) WCC North America customers might have the availability of cutting edge chemical technology-efficient-customer-service-low-cost company to choose from.
4. What would be the impact on WCC North America operations if the proposed changes were successfully implemented?
The impact of proposed changes which include: good raw materials supply without the heavy investment required in a completely vertically integrated structure, and a lean efficient organization structure, on WCC North America operations, is that although each division of WCC is beginning to operate in a more integrated manner, the firm uses public facilities, and a common contracted carriage and railroad tranportation: "Logistics at WCC North America's Chemicals and Performance Products Division is a competitive tool," says Logistics Manager Michael Davidson. "I make sure that we always have more than enough carriers on our inbound and outbound traffic lanes to keep product moving throughout our system", so each division will no longer be able to design, plan, and execute its manufacturing, warehousing, picking, and loading activities nor to keep independent responsibility for customer orders and information status.
5. What changes, if any, would you recommend in WCC North America's information processing arrangements?
The overall recommendation to WCC North America´s to implement an integrated logistics system to coordinate planning, purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution functions must increase attention on providing with the necessary information and improved communication among them to better forecasts of IT customer demand.
6. Is Melinda Sanders in a position to properly understand WCC North America's problems? Why or why not?
It might be possible to think she is not because she is only 29 working for a company that was founded in 1899, but besides graduating from a top university in the western United States with an MBA in marketing, she has climbed different positions in marketing, sales, and distribution operations, until her current position as lead distribution planner in the Chemicals and Performance Products Division, which credits her opinion that the more WCC sales and distribution systems were expanded, the more management and communication bottlenecks seemed to be created, thus this issue, which she was aware of, in regards the customers´ orders information status problems throughout all of WCC's North American operations. This is an evidence that she properly understands the firm´s issues as she strongly believes that any investment in information systems should directly support a specific business strategy.
7. Do you think WCC North America's current situation is applicable across its global operations? How, if at all, does it change the nature of the problem?
Yes, WCC North America's current situation is applicable across its global operations especially due to the global weak economic conditions and the complexity of resolving high-volume, key accounts customer service, which gets complicated because of the number of customers each division serves to meet their differentiated and demanding requirements, and the need to consolidate such focused differentiated services, as a competitive strength at WCC where traditional business strategies are no longer useful, and a WCC's cost-efficient and effective investments strategies should be made on an efficient resource and organization structure to track and share business information to balance the cyclical nature of their earnings on a contemporary competitive global but focused market.