Search results

Maquiladoras operations along the Mexico‐US border are an oft‐studied example of a lean supply chain strategy that allows US manufacturers to benefit from lower labour costs in Mexico while being able to supply to assembly plants in the industrial US Midwest, with a minimum of safety stock. This study examines an alternative strategy of the subsidiary of a North American automotive parts producer, which purchases raw and semi‐finished materials from approved North American automotive 2nd tier suppliers, manages the shipment of the materials to a plant in Thailand where the semi‐finished materials are converted in a labour‐intensive process into higher‐value sub‐assemblies. These sub‐assemblies are then shipped back to the US for installation into automobiles at an assembly plant in the Detroit area. The additional logistics costs of using Thailand as a production base are overcome by demonstrable quality advantages and lower wages, as compared to competitors performing similar operations in Mexican maquiladoras. This case study illustrates that international logistics management strategies must also incorporate product characteristics in addition to customer requirements for meeting optimum logistical performance.

In concluding their review of the environmental and social performance of some 86 worldwide retailers Storebrand Investments (2003) argued that “Shopping is increasingly becoming a leisure activity – done not out of necessity but out of luxury. The long term effects of encouraging consumerism, which is in direct conflict with the definition of being sustainable, is a real conflict to tackle as a retailer” and they encouraged retailers to address this important challenge. In many ways consumerism has become an increasingly defining characteristic of modern, nay post modern, societies (Stearns, 1997) while at the same time sustainability has moved higher and higher up political agendas around the world. This short article looks to explore some of the tensions between consumerism and sustainable retailing. It begins by providing a basic outline of sustainable development and consumerism and of the role of retailing in linking production and consumption and it then examines some of the ways in which UK based retailers are looking to address sustainability agendas.

Earliest localism was sited on a tree or hill or ford, crossroads or whenceways, where people assembled to talk, (Sax. witan), or trade, (Sax. staple), in eggs, fowl, fish or faggots. From such primitive beginnings many a great city has grown. Settlements and society brought changes; appointed headmen and officials, a cloak of legality, uplifted hands holding “men to witness”. Institutions tend to decay and many of these early forms passed away, but not the principle vital to the system. The parish an ecclesiastical institution, had no place until Saxons, originally heathens, became Christians and time came when Church, cottage and inn filled the lives of men, a state of localism in affairs which endured for centuries. The feudal system decayed and the vestry became the seat of local government. The novels of Thomas Hardy—and English literature boasts of no finer descriptions of life as it once was—depict this authority and the awe in which his smocked countrymen stood of “the vicar in his vestry”. The plague freed serfs and bondsmen, but events, such as the Poor Law of 1601, if anything, revived the parish as the organ of local government, but gradually secular and ecclesiastical aspects were divided and the great population explosion of the eighteenth century created necessity for subdivision of areas, which continued to serve the principle of localism however. The ballot box completed the eclipse of Church; it changed concepts of localism but not its importance in government.