Supplier Relationships
According to Jacobs & Chase (2011) “the central idea of supply chain management is to apply a total system approach to managing the flow of information, materials, and services from raw material suppliers through factories and warehouses to the end customer.” Maintaining a strong supplier relationship will promote a stronger partnerships, as well as build trust and worth.
Riordan Manufacturing has implemented a process that ensures “consistency of operations and quality control at all Riordan plants, a common set of procedures has been developed for the management of receiving raw materials, tracking products during manufacturing, and accounting for the finished good inventories.”
Riordan Manufacturing has four location, the Research and Development (R&D) in San Jose, CA, a bottle manufacturing plant in Albany, Georgia, a custom plastic piece manufacturing plant in Pontiac, Michigan, and a fan manufacturing plant in Hangzhou, China. Although the R& D location is also Riordan's Corporate Headquarters, the location has a minimal amount of raw materials and components. The R & D location is comprised of only five personnel who are in tasked with creating new products.
The R&D location has a minimal supply chain because it maintain a small amount of raw materials and components. However, the Albany, Georgian plant has predetermine quotas for products and uses the continuous replenishment model, this means that the manufacturing company “constantly replenish the inventory by working closely with suppliers and/or intermediaries” (San Diego, n.d.), the plant is looking to switch to the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) supply chain. The plants ships 96% on time. The Pontiac, Michigan plant applies the make to order supply chain because it manufactures custom plastic parts with new dies based on customer specifications. This supply chain model is called the make to order.
The Hangzhou, China plant is the largest operation...