Supply Chain Management Analysis: Amazon's Strategies and Challenges

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Amazon's supply chain management. It begins by outlining Amazon's key supply chain strategies, emphasizing demand-driven planning, agile adaptation, and product optimization for innovation and efficiency. The report then delves into specific aspects of Amazon's supply chain, including customer service, cost control, risk management, and partner/supplier relationships, highlighting both strengths and challenges. Furthermore, the report examines the crucial role of airports in Amazon's supply chain, particularly in facilitating air cargo transportation, and discusses issues such as security and policy restrictions that impact the performance of the supply chain. The report uses references like Christopher, M. (2016), Fawcett & Waller, (2014), and Hugos, M. H. (2018) to support its findings and provide a well-rounded understanding of Amazon's complex and dynamic supply chain operations.

Running head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
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SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
Answer of question 1:
Implementation of the supply chain activities
The supply chain of Amazon company works in the context of providing the
customers of the company with the best quality products in minimised delivery time. The
company implements the activities of the supply chain with these following strategies:
Strategy 1: Adoption of the planning that is driven by the demand and the operation
model of the business that is based on the current insights of demand and the shaping of
demand. This strategy mainly consists of the execution of the right prediction and the tools
for planning of the contingency and it would help in ensuring the total view and the effective
response for the risks like the suppliers shutting down their business, political disruptions and
the major activities that affects the manufacturing aspects (Yu et al., 2016). The company
adjusts the pricing and the strategies for promotion for the shaping of the demand and then
move the extra product efficiently, which would help in the driving of the growth of revenue.
Strategy 2: Built an agile and adaptive supply chain along with the swift planning and
the combined execution. The company deployed the capabilities of the dynamic planning and
continuous fine-tuned operations for ensuring the agility of the response for meeting the
changes in the demand.
Strategy 3: Optimised the product designs and the management of the product for
manufacturing, sustainability and supply for accelerating the beneficial innovation
(Christopher, 2016). The company made the swift and strict decisions in the early stages of
the development of product and these decision helped in the shaping of the products. The
designs were optimised for the manufacturability, operations of supply chain and the supply.
The company understood the aspect of the product innovation and the competitive advantage
bases from the choice and management of the technologies and the suppliers. The company

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
manages the information, processes, people and the decisions related to the products of the
company which helps them in obtaining advantages in the retail market.
Answer of question 2:
Figure: Supply chain of amazon
Some of the issues in the supply chain of amazon are:
Customer service: The supply chain of the company is mainly focussed on the
delivery of the best quality products to the customers in minimal time. The company provides
the customers with the right products in right quantity (Hugos, 2018). It might be a simple
aspect of the supply chain but sometimes there are issues in the customer service sector. The
demand of the customers might change after receiving any product or the product might not
be same as what was promised. These factors lead to the damage of the reputation of the
company.
Cost control: The costs of operation are facing severe challenges due to the extreme
rise in the cost of the energy and fuel along with the freight (Sanders, 2014). With the
increase in the quantity of the global customers, technology and the labour rates the company
SendinventoryReceiveandstoreCustomerordersproductPick,PackandshipCustomerserviceCustomerreturns

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
faces several challenges for effective management of supply chain management. These costs
adds up to be the extra issue for the capital of the company and the quality of the customer
service gets depleted
Risk management and planning: For sustaining effectively and efficiently in the
changing market, the periodic and possible assessments and redesigns are required to be
made for adopting to the changes in the dynamic of the markets (Leveling, Edelbrock & Otto,
2014). These changes are majorly focussed on the significant changes in the market like the
launching of any new product, the global sourcing, and the availability of the credit and the
requirement of protecting the intellectual property. The company faces this issues in the
supply chain and they have implemented appropriate technologies for overcoming this issue.
Partner/supplier relationship management: This aspect of the supply chain is
important for creating understanding and following on the standards that are agreed among
the company and the suppliers (Vendrell-Herrero et al., 2017). The company consists of the
two distinct methods for the measurement and the communication of the results of the
performance, which wastes significant time and money.
Answer of question 3:
The airports plays an important role in all the supply chain processes that might be
regional and the global from any market to market. The facility of shipping by air is
commonly uses for the products that might be time sensitive or might be of significant high
value and it could justify the higher costs of the transportation in comparison to any other
methods (Ayers & Odegaard, 2017). The company has implemented the Fedex that is the
majorly used for the transportation of the goods globally.
The airports add significant value to the supply chain of company. These airports
increases the efficiency of the supply chain of Amazon Company significantly and provides

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
the opportunity of the increase the efficiency of the customer service (Fawcett & Waller,
2014). The customers expect their products to reach to them as quickly as possible and with
any damage. The company uses the airports for shipping the cargo by air using airplanes at
the minimum cost and the minimal time without damaging any of the product. This reduces
the operation cost significantly. The company depends on the managers of supply chain for
the designing of the network that meets the objectives of the customer service at minimal
cost. The efficient supply chains allows the firms to be increasingly competitive in the
dynamic market.
The major issues of the airports that are hindering the performance of the supply chain
of the company are the security and the policies. It has been observed in the recent times that
the security issue of the airports is growing to be significant and it creates problems for the
supply chain of the amazon company. The air cargo that has to be shipped using air to various
places are prone to theft and misplacement. The policies of several airports of various
countries implements strict restrictions on the air cargo and this increase the transportation
cost and it damages the performance of the supply chain.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN AMAZON
References
Ayers, J. B., & Odegaard, M. A. (2017). Retail supply chain management. CRC Press.
Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.
Fawcett, S. E., & Waller, M. A. (2014). Supply chain game changers—mega, nano, and
virtual trends—and forces that impede supply chain design (ie, building a winning
team). Journal of Business Logistics, 35(3), 157-164.
Hugos, M. H. (2018). Essentials of supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons.
Leveling, J., Edelbrock, M., & Otto, B. (2014, December). Big data analytics for supply chain
management. In Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), 2014
IEEE International Conference on (pp. 918-922). IEEE.
Sanders, N. R. (2014). Big data driven supply chain management: A framework for
implementing analytics and turning information into intelligence. Pearson Education.
Vendrell-Herrero, F., Bustinza, O. F., Parry, G., & Georgantzis, N. (2017). Servitization,
digitization and supply chain interdependency. Industrial Marketing Management, 60,
69-81.
Yu, Y., Wang, X., Zhong, R. Y., & Huang, G. Q. (2016). E-commerce logistics in supply
chain management: Practice perspective. Procedia Cirp, 52, 179-185.