Logistics Management and Supply Chain at TechCo: Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of logistics management issues at TechCo, focusing on the challenges within its supply chain and product design processes. The report identifies fundamental issues such as communication gaps between engineering and operations teams, problems with new technology implementation, and inefficiencies in the supply chain structure. It further explores ethical and sustainable actions to resolve these issues, including recommendations for improved documentation, policy regulations, workplace environment management, and the use of eco-friendly materials. The report also addresses specific issues within the supply process, such as proactive steps to avoid reputational damage and the importance of effective supply chain mapping. The analysis covers both short-term and long-term strategies to enhance TechCo's operations, improve product quality, and promote sustainable practices. The report emphasizes the need for integrated supply chain goals, ethical considerations, and efficient manufacturing processes to ensure long-term growth and competitiveness.

Running head: LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT
Logistics Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author notes

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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Fundamental issues........................................................................................................2
Ethical and sustainable actions to solve configuration of product design issues...........2
Ethical and sustainable actions to solve supply process issues......................................6
Conclusion......................................................................................................................6
References......................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Supply chain management is related to the product designing for improve g the operational
process and developing the product life cycle. The decision making process for the
development and introduction of the product in the market should be designed through the
supply chain management. If a company fails to do that, the product life cycle and the
product subsequent value would be affected. The effective supply chain management would
reduce the costs of manufacturing and make the whole process smooth. The cost of supply
chain management are already present in the early stages of product design. To understand
the importance of supply chain in the product design, one must consider the factors that are
affecting the choices. The performance of the company production team could be impacted if
poor choices are made for suppliers or materials. The factors involved in the process are
logistics, inventory, and transportation efficiencies customer responsiveness, customs and
duties and flexibility. The companies suffer in their operations because they often do not link
the supply chain aspects with the product design issues. In this study, the researcher will
address the fundamental supply chain issues in the company TechCo and would try to analyse
the issues in supply chain and reconfiguration of the product design.
Fundamental issues
There are several factors that are affecting the supply chain operation of the company
TechCo. The management has found several ethical and sustainability issues in the product
designing as well as supply processes which are to be solved as early as possible otherwise
these will be hampering the growth and operations of the company.
Firstly, the company has two teams working simultaneously for the product
development and their introduction. The engineering team works for the new product

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development and the operations team works for the new product introduction to the
customers by using Advanced Manufacturing Operations (AMO) process. Now the issue
relates to the communication of the information between teams. These teams are
interrelated as they depend upon the information of product design by the engineering team
and then confirming the product can be produced in volume.
Secondly, this company uses new technology named thixomoulding in the product
design. The product design of the $3 part from a tier 3 supplier that was supplying
mechanical sub‐assembly contract manufacturer remained unnoticed from the part of the
company. This had led the problems to start when the initial suppliers and product volume
started to ramp. This cam led the company to face the threat of the identification of the
products by the customers and move to the technology of the competitors.
Thirdly, the current designs had more vibration hence the designers wanted to use
harder materials for the production of the parts hence sourced injection molded parts.
However, this process was not used as the previous stages were meeting specification more
effectively without involving the supply chain management process.
Fourthly, the company found the current supply chain to be unfeasible for long term
growth hence searching for the new supply chain started to stake place. Now the company
was not being able to find out the proper and efficient supply chain in the whole market of the
North America. The entire North American market had tree suppliers dependable for this
company TechCo. This had led the company to find out the issue that the tools were not
handled properly by the previous suppliers which is the reason why the tools have high
potential to be damaged affecting product lifecycle.

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Finally the company lagged behind than the competitors in the market because the
learning period was time consuming and the process of maintaining high quality of the tools
were slowing down the manufacturing process.
Ethical and sustainable actions to solve configuration of product design
issues
Product designing in the TechCo have some severe problems that is affecting the
production of the company in both short and long run. Product designing of any
manufacturing company has two parts that they have to take care of. The first one is product
development and the second one is product introduction. In both of the section the first thing
is the lack of communication. For the company the product development is the remit of the
Engineering while the product introduction is the task of the Operations team. The lack of
communication between these two team is resulting in slow downing the production and long
lagging paperwork.
Short term actions for ethical issues
 Documenting the Statistics Properly
The key problem of the company is the lack of documentation tasks by the company
engineers. It is the reason that the company engineers and the operations employees
are not getting enough time for documentation (Schaltegger and Burritt 2018). The
cooperation between the engineering team and the operations team is important for it.
The company executives should take the responsibility of arranging some meetings in
short term basis to sort the primary discrepancies of time between these two teams.
 Policy regulation
There is surely some policies of the company for building the positive workplace. The
ethical policies are one that takes acre of the employee ethics and their work process

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to provide the customers with quality service and products. TechCo is lagging behind
in its performance as the employees are not taking the ethical issues seriously. As
opined by Vezzoli et al. 2015, in the engineering industry, most of the time problems
occur as the engineers and the operational managers concentrate on the manufacturing
of the product and do not give importance to the supply chain management. As the
short term goal, the company should try to have the policies revised and regulated
properly among the employees. This will ignite the ethical aspects of the workers and
there would be a positive work place environment.
Long term actions for ethical issues
 Managing workplace environment
The main ethical issues faced by the company are based on workplace environment
and team work ethics. The company supplies their manufactured products to the
Original Equipment Manufacturers or the OEMs. This is why the company has to
build their capacity to produce huge amount of product at a small span of time. Other
than that the company need to engage more of its employees in the decision making
process so that there would be a balanced and inclusive work culture (Spiekermann
2015). The main challenges of the company is to meet the standards of the company
product qualities. The problems in the organisation is also becoming the reason for
standard degradation. Hence, it is required that the company address the ethical issues
of their product designing and take required actions. Guiding the Workplace Principles
The product quality development for the customers is one of the most important part
of company ethics building. This is directly related to the production and the brand
image as well. If the production is not of said quality that would be dangerous for the
safety of the user’s as well. The company has to link their supply chain goals with the

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product designing (Bryson and Winfield 2017). This is the long term goal for the
company to manage all the operational and management sections in order to give
premium quality to the consumers.
The next important problem in the company is the sustainability issue in the reconfiguration
of the product designing. The company is suffering in producing quality products in time
because of the lacking between the departmental communication and some of the
manufacturing deficiencies. One of these deficiencies are the cost and time enhancement in
production. Other than that the production has been slowed down and the higher vibration
effects of the product. The designs that are been used in the company products are having
higher vibrations while used in the final products. The engineers wanted to use the harder
material for the new production to reduce the vibrating effect. In this process are short term
and the long term actions are described below-
Short term actions for sustainability issues
 Using harder material for the product designs for quality
The vibrations on the products could cause problem in the OEM manufacturing. At
the same time, this might reduce the quality status of the products of the company as
well. According to Morris (2016), the decision making of the process should not be
limited to the engineers. The company should change their approach in this and take
the decisions of the supply chain management department. The changes would be
required in the previous stages of the manufacturing process as well. Therefore, the
sustainable measure would be to work in a cooperative way.
 Increasing unit production on per day basis for cost efficiency
With the increasing cost and time, per day production of the company is reducing. For
the sustainable development of the company, the authority has to motivate the

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employees to work in sync. Increasing the production in per day basis could be the
solution (Charter and Tischner 2017). The company engineers and the supply chain
management has to work consecutively to increase per day production. They should
have short term aims in production and increase the number of units for per day
production.
Long term actions for sustainability issues
 Redesigning supply chain structure
The company has a complex supply chain structure as of now. This needs to be
redesigned. The three tire structure of the company supply chain is actually increasing
the confusion in between. Even the information system used by the different
departments of the company are different. This is creating lags in the operations of the
company in each sections (Bhamra and Lofthouse 2016). The first thing that the
company should try to do is to revise their work structure. The management of the
company is to be in sink to reduce the complex procedures.
 Using eco-friendly procedure and materials
Using the materials that are environment friendly could accentuate the image of the
company. There are fall in the quality of the products because of the disparity
between the engineers and the supply chain managers. In the opinion of Eskandarpour
et al. (2015), the materials that are used newly should be stronger than the previous
one. The environment friendly solutions for the materials are necessary for the long
term sustainability of the company engineering products.
Ethical and sustainable actions to solve supply process issues
Ethical and sustainable actions to solve supply process issues:

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The supply chain management of TechCo is highly improper. This is due to
the fact that the supply chain agents used by the company previously were actually not
handling the tools properly. These supply chain management had been involved in the
company’s operation as the product moved from the engineering to the production process in
the product management process (Copacino 2019). The initial involvement was to determine
the commercial aspects of the supply chain management as the initial parts and tooling
approved by the engineering teams. This transition of the operation led the supply chain
management to the process of securing the future supply chain at the critical stage in product
lifecycle.
Short term goals for ethical issues
The short team goals for TechCo includes-
 Taking proactive steps for avoiding the reputation damage.
Each and every company works for gaining reputation in the markets. This is
the reason why TechCo also needs to implement strong corporate social responsibility
regarding to offer a low quality product to the customers (Hugos 2018). This can
affect the brand image effectively and leads to get imposed the potential penalties and
other civil liability. This can affect the interest of the customers along with the other
stakeholders.
 Supply chain mapping
Another ethical step that the company implement is mapping the supply chain
in an effective way (Bozarth and Handfield 2019). The steps ere include finding out
how the supply chain must look, identifying the suppliers who were dormant at that
point of time, using geo analytics to measure risks, managing the contents important

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for the direct as well as indirect suppliers, tracing every product from the raw material
for finishing good and sharing the supply chain story.
 Reviewing and updating the supplier contracts and codes of conduct
As the company TechCo has already faced the issues of unethical handling of
the tools by the previous supply chain therefore it needs to be more careful this time
(Christopher 2016). The supply chain management process needs to revisit the
supplier contracts frequently ad bring modification according to the joint decision
made between the company as well as the supply chain. The internal codes of conduct
and the supply chain contracts need to be revised in order to improve the transparency
between parties as well as better allocation of risks for developing the supply chain
abuse.
 Promoting transparency and accountability
In this regard the company needs to employ some technical tools for the
perfect monitoring of the supply chain so that any unethical moves are tracked by the
company immediately. The company needs to perform a logistics assessment for
determining where the ethical moves can be implemented (Mangan and Lalwani
2016). This program will be helping in analyzing the supportability planning of the
supply chain. This is conducted by the subject matter experts of the company not
directly associated with programs to be assessed.
Long term goals for ethical issues
 Hiring a CSR manager
In the complicated and long supply chain of the company often tend to indulge
in the forced labor which may led to face legal issues by the company. In addition to
this the company also needs get proper understand of the impact of these risks and
employ a manager who will look into the matter of social responsibility without

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which the company can never work ethically in the market. The ill manifestation of
risks therefore will be eliminated therefore making the supply chain more ethical.
 Provide training for developing competitive advantage
Compliance and continuous improvement will provide competitive advantage
to the supply chain of the company (Fredendall and Hill 2016). Here the company
will be arranging trainings about the legal matters for combining with the local laws s
that no parties will be bypassing the laws of the nation or for that matter the states to
gain unfair advantage. This will improve the culture of the supply chain management
and lead to gain competitive advantage in the market where the company is operating.
 Professionalism
The connection between the company and the supply chain will be so
professional that each of the entities will be treating one another with equal amount of
trust and respect. They need to stay away from any type of intervention and
commanding one another as both of the parties have their own in depth knowledge
about their tasks.
Short term goals for sustainability issues
 Communicating expectations
The company before collaborating with the new supply chain, must
communicate the corporate values and culture to the suppliers. This process of
establishing as well as communicating the expectation eliminates the problem of
miscommunication as well as unknown risks. This is a critical step to get sustainable
efforts from the suppliers which helps the company to get the scope for using many
resources and tools unexpectedly. Perfect communicant both written as well as verbal
can engage the company in a sustainable growth and conduct effective business with
the supply chain (Meredith and Shafer 2019).

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 Driving performance improvement
One the baseline performance of the supply chain is understood, the audit
programs to measure the performance improvement can be implemented. This leads
to the preparation of the development and execution of the corrective action plans will
be easy to be implemented. Tis will be communicated to the suppliers to develop a
capacity building program and terminate the suppliers when noncompliance process
persists.
Long term goals for sustainability issues
 Strengthening delivery
More efficient training to deliver the products to the customers can enhance
the efficacy of the company as well as capacity of the supply chain. According to
Channel Coordination theory the process of improving the supply chain performance
can align the plans (Dubey et al., 2017). The objectives of the individual enterprises
which usually emphases on the inventory managements hence by ordering the
decisions in the distributed inter-company settings.
 Developing training and capacity building programs
This is an important step for improving the sustainability and driving
behavioral changes throughout the supply chain. This can be dome through the annual
vendor conferences, capacity building campaigns and online training modules.
Through showing the success stories of the company, TechCo can solve sustainability
issues in the supply chain process.
 Joining industry collaboration
The complex supply chain management cannot be solved individually. This is
the reason why the company need to collaborate with the other companies in the same
industry. Here the collaborations can help in the preventing audit fatigue and training