Apple's New Supply Chain?

Adam Seeton

Apple has debatably the Number 1 supply chain in the world right now. Based out of China, Apple has been able to keep customers and suppliers on board year by year. Now, within the next six weeks, we may be seeing Apple add another Supply Chain that will be based out of India. Government officials believe that the new plant will be out of Bangalore and run by Wistron Corp., a Taiwanese manufacture. This will help Apple sell much more Apple products in India. India is a huge smartphone using country, but always decide to buy the cheaper phones. Another reason why Apple is willing to add another supply chain in India is because of how much the sales growth has been slowing in China. This is not only beneficial to Apple, but to India as well. If Apple decides to finalize the deal, it will open a lot up for India and the technology industry.

Page, Paul. "Today's Top Supply Chain and Logistics News From WSJ." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 24 Mar. 2017. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.

Walmart's New Purchases

Adam Seeton

Recently, Walmart has decided to start buying small online retailers so that it can compete with Amazon and display items that you would not see every day at Walmart. Walmart already have bought Moosejaw, ShoeBuy, and just added a hipster clothing website, ModCloth, to that list. They wanted to broaden its audience to appeal to the wealthier consumers as well. The only issue with this whole process is that not all suppliers want to be involved with Walmart. Many of the suppliers are not agreeing to their supplier deals because they do not want to see their products next to Walmart. Because Walmart is a corporation that is discount-driven, meaning they sell things cheap, they do not want to downgrade their products. Walmart is standing firm that it will not be controlling with their new small online businesses even though they may be tempted to put these companies under their wing.

Page, Paul. "Today's Top Supply Chain and Logistics News From WSJ." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 27 Mar. 2017. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.

Prompt #3: Exploring Communication

Jordan Thimm

I recently had the opportunity to talk actually my grandma who works in logistics, she actually works for the USPS and she has been with that postal service for as long as I can remember. She says things today are much different than they were around when she first started working there.
"Things are much more fast pace today, people want their packages faster and faster it seems", she said.
I asked her about the language at her work and how they talk to each other in the work environment. She proceeded to tell me, in her specific line type of work most of the time she is on her own, going to her regular routes and hitting every spot. Her routes changes so she has to be aware every time she takes a delivery that it is going to the right address and that it is part of her route. Mail men/ladies must be organized and punctual, since their whole job revolves around getting certain pieces of mail to the right receiver, and with so many people in this world it would be quite easy to mix up a few envelopes, but this can be very stressful to both the mail person and the person receiving the mail.

Mapping the Road Ahead in Uncertain Times

Jordan Thimm

This year, NC State will be holding it's 35th annual Supply Chain Resource Cooperative Meeting and it revealed that the theme of the meeting will be on "mapping ahead the road in uncertain times", where they will bring together a bunch of industry experts to share insights and thoughts on how companies can prepare and deal with supply chain issues and changes in the market in future with all the drastic change that is already happening with the election of president Donald Trump. These changes bring both positives and negatives to the table. I learned that on one hand, the Trump administration plans on spending a lot on infrastructure, highways, airports and other things that could help boost the supply chain market. On the other hand, these people in these markets are not getting too excited yet. With all the talk of "the wall" and Trump's plans to cut taxes and also his stance of trade agreements with certain companies. He seems to want to stop trade agreements and this could cause problems with people within the supply chain field.
https://scm.ncsu.edu/blog/2017/03/04/scrc-meeting-mapping-the-road-ahead-in-a-time-of-daily-disconcerting-tweets/