A Detailed Report on Procurement and Supply Chain Management at Amazon

This report provides an overview of Amazon's procurement and supply chain management. It begins with an introduction to Amazon as a leading e-commerce company and highlights its significant market share. The report then delves into supply issues, including poor supply chain management, inefficiencies, insufficient stock, and overselling. Operational issues such as service design, quality management, capacity, location strategy, human resources, and inventory management are also discussed. The report identifies top challenges like unreliable online information and lack of dynamism in data. Problem-solving strategies are based on reliable data sources. The conclusion emphasizes Amazon's success in mitigating operational and supply chain problems. The report references sources such as Amazon.com, Ecommerce Tips, and SEC filings to support its analysis.

PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY
CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Introduction
• Amazon, an e-commerce company is based in
America. The company is founded by Jeff Bezos
and is located in Seattle, Washington.
• Established in the year 1994 it is the largest e-
commerce company in the world in terms of the
market capitalization and revenue earned.
• Initially started with the online bookstore and later
it also included the video and the music streaming
and eventually the online retailing business.
• Its online retailing business included a wide range
of the products and this has led to the huge
demand of the company (Amazon.com 2018).

Supply Issues
 Poor supply chain management- when a
company is at the top of the supply chain
management performance, the availability
and the product chain suffers considerably
from the supplier's mistake.
 Manufacturers are often messed up with the
product delivery and is unable to ship the
product within the stipulated time limit.
 Inefficiency in the whole process- the
usage of the inefficient processes that the
suppliers undertake due to the complacency.

Supply Issues
 Insufficient stock- Without sufficient supply
of the products, it is not possible to catch up
with the increasing demand of the products.
 Lack of the monitoring the sales outlets-
effective monitoring of all the sales outlets
and if not managed properly might lead to
the drain of the inventory immediately.
 Overselling- in order to reduce any kind of
confusion, the sales of the product must be
allowed only till the stocks are able to sustain
(Ecommerce Tips, 2018).

Operations issues
 Amazon’s operational issues are dependent on the
certain areas that are as follows:
 Design of the services and the goods
 Quality of the management
 Capacity and the process design
 Location strategy
 Strategy and the layout design
 Human resources and job design
 Supply chain management
 Inventory management
 Scheduling
 Maintenance (Sec.gov, 2018)

Top 3 challenges
 Searching through the online search
engines is sometimes leads to
information that may not be reliable.
 Several big companies often are unwilling
to reveal their problems and issues
related to the operation and the supply.
 There are other challenges like the issues
that are cited over different online
sources lack the dynamism. The data are
found to be extrapolated or are old.

Problem Solving Strategies
 The strategies that are used to address
the challenges are based reliance on the
data that available from the sites that are
sufficiently referenced (Masic, 2013).
 The data from the original home website
are only considered to be authentic.

Conclusion
 To conclude, it can be said that Amazon is
one of the biggest e-commerce company.
 Over time it has gained immense
popularity and the market share due to
its effective mitigation of the operational
and supply issues and problems.

References
 Amazon.com (2018). Amazon.com: Online Shopping for
Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more. [online]
Amazon.com. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/ [Accessed
12 Apr. 2018].
 Ecommerce Tips (2018). 3 Problems with Amazon Inventory
Management – And Their Solutions - E-commerce Tips. [online]
Ecommerce Tips. Available at: http://ecommercetips.org/3-
problems-with-amazon-inventory-management/ [Accessed 12
Apr. 2018].
 Masic, I. (2013). The importance of proper citation of references
in biomedical articles. ActaInformaticaMedica, 21(3), 148.
 Sec.gov (2018). 10-K. [online] Sec.gov. Available at:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/0001018724
16000172/amzn-20151231x10k.htm [Accessed 12 Apr. 2018].