Coca-cola and Supply Chain Essay Example

market leadership and profitable growth.

The marketing departments are responsible for marketing the products, advertising the products and promoting the products. If all these departments performs their duty firmly then the objectives of The Coca-Cola Company will reach its ultimate goal Finance The finance department of the Coca Cola Company is responsible for financial record keeping. This involves keeping records of money received and paid out. The financial records will be used to produce the annual reports for the shareholders so that they can see the company performance.The Finance department is also responsible for the management accounts of the business like marketing etc. The Coca-Cola Company finance department is also responsible for making budget of the company and for each department like marketing department or research and development department.

They will also be involved in the planning process like taking over or any major decision. Packaging The packaging department of The Coca-Cola Department is responsible for the packaging of the products. They have to make the packaging attractive so that that product meets the eyes of the consumers.Bringing new products package is their responsibility. It works with the companies bottling partners to produce an attractive combination.

Sales The sales department of the Coca Cola Company is to coordinate the selling program. They also have to make the distribution methods, etc. Also, decide how much to sell and how much to store in the warehouse and to choose the transporting method which is the most cost efficient and the quickest way. Research and development This department has their budget given by the finance department and their responsibility is to investigate new products.

They work closely with marketing by

looking at marketing research findings. They have to bring new products in the market for the change because the consumer cannot stick with the same old products. If necessary then they also have to improve the quality of the products. The Coca-Cola Company research department has done a lot of research and recently they have launched many new products like Diet coke with lemon, Fanta Tropical, Minute maids, Fanta raspberry, Fanta blue berry etc. Administration This department is essential for keeping the business going.They act as a help support of the company, it is not the central purpose the business but every business organization would need this department.

Most businesses rely on administration to be organized. They deal with enquiries, give messages produce documents and give information to any customer. The complaints that this department will get would be transferred to the research and development department to make the product better or fix the problem that the consumer is having. These departments are the most important department of The Coca-Cola Company because they helps the company to meets the objectives of The Coca-Cola Company i. . surviving, customer satisfaction and make more profits.

As I said that the help desk department satisfies the customer by providing the information they needs and taking the complaints and passing to the research and development departments who improves the products. In any organization like coca-cola, supply chain strategy is needed most importantly in other to gain competitive advantage in the market. There are number of levels of supply chain strategies. All businesses or organization has a high level of corporate strategy that they operate on and that is where

the mission statement is needed.Basically, top organizations like coca-cola has a competitive strategy for each of their market or the services they are operating on which means that the competitive strategy in Europe is completely different from the competitive strategy in Africa. The characteristics of coca-cola products is not consistent (It varies) you can have a coca-cola classic flavour in USA, a Lychee flavour in Japan, a Chapman flavour in Africa and many more flavours in other countries.

In the production process or manufacturing process of coca-cola products before distribution to consumers, eight key activities take place which is listed as below 1).Sourcing water 2). Initial water treatments 3). Interim processing 4). Water purification 5).

Mineralization of water 6). Disinfection of water 7). Filling and packaging 8). Monitoring quality in the market place. To improve the performance of a supply chain, the use of Supply chain systems is a vital key in every organization.

Supply chain management (SCM) systems are used to coordinate and monitor the movement of products and services from suppliers to customers (including manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers).These systems are also used to manage demand, warehouses, trade logistics, transportation, and other issues concerning facilities, movement, monitoring and transformation of materials on their way to customers. Manufacturers in this present global markets are experiencing total reduced margins coupled with rising customer expectations this is because customers expects more from them and more has to be given to the customers in other to retain customers and to gain competitive advantage among other competitors in the market .Being a very successful supply chain partner for your customer’s demands, up-to-the-minute information should be visible. One of the

most important key to improve the performances of a supply chain is the use of ERP SYSTEMS. There are several ways Integrated ERP SYSTEMS improves the performance of the supply chain but I would be taking note of the most 4 important ways integrated ERP system improves supply chain performance 1.

Develop better customer insight and interaction To build long-term relationships with customers today, you need to listen to them and create an immediate understanding with them.This requires that you maintain a holistic view of those customers. You can obtain such a broad-spectrum view from a variety of data sources, sales and marketing, customer service and field service systems, internal database information, and knowledge gathered from unstructured interaction with customers. This integrated ERP system enable manufacturers to look beyond tactical order fulfilment and gain a better understanding of customer wishes for customized products and services which can help the company differentiate its offerings and increase profits.

It can also lead to insight and answers to questions such as what are the buying patterns? Are we driving larger orders to customers? Are we seeing demand increases or downturns that we must react to? All this are basic questions asked when the use of ERP Systems is been implemented. However, Understanding your customers needs and meeting there expectations is a very vital part of a supply chain. How to understand your customers wants are listed below. A.

UNDERSTAND THE DYNAMICS OF CUSTOMERS NEEDS: Basically, understanding customers needs will help you define new market opportunities and drive innovation and revenue growth in every aspect of your organization. In so many cases, whatever a customer wants today may not be what

he or she wants tomorrow. Or he or she may want more of it. If you're offering low prices, customers want those prices slashed further.

If you're offering state-of-the art products, they want them newer still. In meeting ever-increasing customer demands for lower, faster, better, and newer, companies are driving themselves and their competitors to the brink B.DO CONTINUOUS CUSTOMER RESEARCH: If you want to develop a new product or service, exploratory market and customer research should be an essential and continuous component of the process. In this case, you should explore and view the market to see what the customer needs. It provides the foundation and platform for effective idea generation and creativity management. It describes customer or consumer needs, wants, gripes, complaints, and problems that each have about the performance of a certain activity, function, process, life event, or product.

This research, prior to idea generation, provides the basis for setting up a problem-solving mindset towards idea generation. To explore customer needs and wants, examine external market (Do a feasibility study) and competitive trends, ascertain potential needs and wants of each customer segment and character type, observe people to discover their unrealized needs. Another way integrated ERP SYSTEMS can improve supply chain is: 2. Achieve global visibility in a demand-driven supply chain It's critical in an age of tight cost management that manufacturers optimize inventory investment and continue to provide excellent customer service.To do so, manufacturers need to know where inventory is throughout the entire supply chain which is information an ERP system can help to provide.

Knowing when and where inventory is needed enables manufacturers to develop the best plan for production and

resupply in critical customer relationships building only what is required for shipments. Beyond having the right data for internal operations, manufacturers must also be able to provide customers with visibility into inventory and product availability.In a demand-driven world, real-time intelligence not nightly batch updates is required to make timely and effective decisions. This now means systems must be open to the new ways of working including mobile and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies and support for tracing and other regulatory compliance requirements. The right ERP system can help meet your needs in all these areas.

3. Lean manufacturing, global sourcing, and supplier integration Managing to the lowest possible manufactured cost is essential. This means applying lean manufacturing practices and connecting to the best suppliers on a global basis.Today, lean operations are driving an increase in speed and response time for all supply chain participants. Unfortunately for most manufacturers, the new lean business processes are not supported by their legacy systems and must be implemented as manual processes, which can defeat the information visibility crucial to state-of–the-art supply chains.

Locating the best suppliers requires a comprehensive supplier database that enables a manufacturer to recognize where new opportunities for lower costs exist such as suppliers in emerging countries.This means that manufacturers must have real-time connections to suppliers to respond to changing production demands. Once identified, these new suppliers must be brought on board quickly and cost effectively with the ability to share and respond to real-time demand and production data, including new product designs and critical engineering changes. The current generation of integrated ERP systems includes the processes and capabilities to help ensure lean operation, including the

need for real-time production data exchange with suppliers.

. MANAGING FOR HIGHER PERFORMANCE Executives know that measurement and performance are inextricably linked. Whole new metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and benchmarks can give advance warning of problems managers may face in their operations. The real power of these metrics comes when managers can quickly access real-time data that reflects the global domain of their operations.

Done well, performance analytics can make manufacturers significantly more agile an important consideration in today’s very lean supply chains.However, measuring performance is often far too difficult in the world of disparate legacy systems, the result being that most companies do not currently have a standardized and automated performance analysis capability to manage for higher performance. Integrated ERP systems today include business analytics that enable executives to standardize metrics across the organization and monitor production and profitability. In fact, ERP systems can provide actionable information to employees at all levels of the organization and make it accessible through their familiar desktop tools, bringing speed and quality to their decision making.By integrating data, standardizing processes, and opening up visibility to the global supply chain, an integrated ERP system can offer manufacturers a fast path to reduced cost structures, increased speed, and improved transparency that can improve customer satisfaction and company profitability.

The bottom line is that Today's ERP systems have become an operating platform that can scale and deal with the global competition that is in every manufacturer's future. Another important way to improve the performance of a supply chain is the Implementation of ICT.ICT implementation in an organization is a very important aspect that involves knowledge management and information sharing which

gives boost to the benefits of the companies. Companies like coca-cola could successfully utilize the ICT and information sharing techniques by the following listed below. •Giving more focus on the reducing response time. •Re-designing the business processes.

•Streamlining logistic activities across the supply chain to reduce cost and improved efficiency. •Developing high valued supply chain relationships. Enhancing customer services for competitive advantage and trying to attain global standard and access to the world market. Most companies like coca-cola had considerably invested in the development of a probable integrated IT infrastructure solutions for logistics and supply chain network management (L ; SCM) in terms of computer hardware, software, and connectivity by means of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Bar Code System (BCS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as mentioned earlier and also Intranet, Extranet and Internet as shown below.ROLES OF ICT The adoption of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is spreading rapidly in supply chain management.

As companies seek to improve supply chain efficiency through increased integration, ICT can be considered as a key enabler for supply chain management by supporting information-sharing. ICT has a major role to play in the improvement and performance of supply chain integration. The role of ICT in supply chain has emerged as below. •Negotiating multilateral trade agreements •Finalising Bi-lateral trade agreements Expediting communications and transportation of data/information •Lowering the cost and time reduction. Use of ICT in the business Internal ICT Communications used by Coca Cola use ICT to communicate both internally externally.

This includes communication with: • Employees - Fax will be used to contact the employees because most employees will have a fax machine in their office or wherever they

will be working • Management - If management need to be contacted then pagers would probably be the alternative to contact them, fax machine could be a factor as well. Customers - The only ICT communication used by Coca Cola to contact customers could be E-mailing, they could E-mail customers different products or new sale's etc. • Distributors of Coca Cola - They would probably be contacted by Video conference because the distributors are very likely to be from other countries rather than the country the business is trying to consumer the products from. Internal ICT Communications that Coca Cola use are: E-mail - E-mail will save a lot of time within the business if everybody would start emailing instead of calling a meeting.Coca Cola staff has programs installed on their computers, which tells them once they have received E-mail. This lets them communicate quickly with one another.

Staff within Coca cola has access to a computer where they can E-mail. The disadvantage of this type of communication is that it is quite expensive, as it would have to be on all day long. The advantage of this is that it is fast and information can be passed on quickly. They can avoid the disadvantage by having broadband where you pay a certain sum for unlimited access. Fax - Faxing allows people to have copies of documents they may require.

Faxing is similar to emailing. But you do not receive the messages on a computer but a fax machine. Messages can also be sent via fax to tell employees of urgent messages, meetings, memoranda's, newsletters and import notices are amongst things that can be sent by

via tax. The advantage of this is that import documents can be received quickly but the disadvantage could by that not everyone within the business would actually have a fax machine to use, or they may not look at it very often.

Pagers - Mainly executives use pagers in the business. Pagers allow these people to receive information wherever they are at whatever time.Pagers, in general are a good thing as it allows people to receive information on the move. A disadvantage of this would by that you cannot send long messages, all messages must be short, and this could lead to misunderstanding of messages. Words may be shortened and this may lead to more of confusion. Video Conferencing - Video conferencing can be proved to be very important but not all companies may use it.

This form of communication can allow people from different countries to have a meeting. Video conferencing allows people to talk to one another and listen to what is being said.An example when this could be used is if a meeting is taking place and someone is not there they can be reached via the videoconference and can take part in the meeting. This is a good form of communication as it allows people to take part wherever they are. External ICT Communications used by Coca Cola Fax Coca Cola use their fax for external suppliers.

Suppliers are the only people who do fax them externally. This form of external communications is important as important documents could be axed from the supplier to the company and vice versa. This would save time and money.