Search results

Shanghai ANE Logistics Co., Ltd., established on June 1, 2010, is a business of road part-load logistics for goods from 5 to 300 kilograms. Mr. Wang Yongjun and his management team have spent five consecutive years building ANE into the biggest part-load franchising network in China, and set up a brand new business model, through integration of traditional transport lines, part-load express network and information technology platform.

ACC Limited, under Project 30-30, had targeted to produce and sell 30 million tons (mt) of cement in the year 2011. In May 2011, the Head of Central Logistics had found the target of the project to have become increasingly difficult to achieve. He believed that to sell 30 mt of cement, 30 mt had to be transported, thereby, advancing the role of the logistics function from that of a mere facilitator to a critical actor. As possible opportunities to increase sales, issues at the Bulk Cement Corporation (India) Limited (BCCI), and the plant at Wadi are being discussed in the case. The head of BCCI had raised concerns about the decreased logistical capacity of BCCI post a mandate from the Indian Railways on transporting 58-wagon rakes against 41-wagon rakes. A common belief was that with more wagons per rake, the quantity transited from Wadi would be higher. However, this was not the case and a capacity addition was being proposed. The President of Wadi Cluster had expressed that as an effort to reduce the transit time between Wadi and BCCI, priority was given to loading for BCCI. Though an improvement was observed with the introduction of 58 wagons per rake, Wadi was facing issues. This had affected Wadi's ability to serve other markets. The focus of the case is on analysing the options being considered by ACC to increase market presence, logistics capacity at BCCI, and the overall throughput at Wadi.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to understand the concept of clustering and identify clusters for improving capacity utilization, analyse transport routes to optimize logistics resources, analyse the impact of a full truckload on resource optimization, evaluate unused capacity and ascertain the impact of reverse milk run to reduce the same and apply clustering and reverse milk run to optimize the logistics resources.

The case study is about a freight forwarding company that offered end-to-end logistics solutions for the exporters based in India. Within a short time span, the company became one of the sought-after service providers for its clients. However, when the company planned to expand its business by expanding its client base, the efficiencies reduced and hurt the profitability of the company. It was all excellent with the limited number of clients, but as the number of distantly located clients surged, the operating costs increased. Trucks were running with partial loads, thus reducing efficiency. The rate of increase in cost surpassed the rate of revenue every time. The cost per mile of transportation was on the rise. The surging fuel prices were adding to the heat. In spite of being one of the first choices for clients, the company could not generate good profit margins. If they chose to increase prices, the company would have lost customers to the cheaper unorganized players in the market. It was time to choose between growth and survival. The company could not sustain itself without devising a mechanism to reduce costs. The company would not have sustained itself without devising a mechanism to reduce costs. To sustain in the business, the company had to device a mechanism to reduce costs. Whether to continue operating the conventional way or to transform? Was there a logistics strategy that would have improved transportation efficiency and reduced the costs for the company?

The case study is suitable for teaching post-graduate management courses in operations and logistics, supply chain management and supply chain analytics, as well as entrepreneurship-related courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 9: Operations and logistics.

This case focuses on the issue of additional fleet acquisition by Ispaat Parivahan Limited (IPL) for its contract obligation fulfilment with Solid Steel Limited. As per contract, IPL was to transport overall 15,000 tons per month (tpm) till July 31, 2015 to the North and West. But IPL failed to uphold its part of the contract and fell short of the target for the North. IPL could transport only 12,800 tpm, leading to a penalty payment. To avoid this, the company proposed acquisition of more fleet. One of the issues was additional time due to return loads. The Board wanted IPL to assess scenarios with and without return loads.

East Texas Oxygen (ETOX) delivered high-pressure cylinders of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen to twelve wholly-owned branches scattered throughout East Texas and Louisiana. Employees loaded and unloaded individual high-pressure cylinders off of and onto trailers manually and the firm had never had a related accident. Robert Jenkins had been challenged to decrease the cost of supplying the branches with cylinders and other supplies. He was considering recommending the palletization of delivery operations which required numerous changes within the organization. This case required students to determine the best routing for the delivery truck(s) and to determine whether or not the number of trucks and drivers could be reduced under palletization. Students were then required to do a capital budgeting analysis and make a recommendation of whether or not to palletize.

Upon completion of the case study, students should be able to understand how changes in a macro environment affect the competitive landscape in an emerging market; acquire a granular understanding about the logistics industry in an emerging market and the various business models developed to service customer needs; determine the attractiveness and challenges of doing business in a fragmented but sunrise industry in an emerging market; and identify the drivers for growth and profitability in the logistics business.

Manisha Sharaf (she/her) and her co-founders conceived the idea of Truck Hall in 2011 to ride with the tide created by booming public investments in the infrastructure and transportation sector. Truck Hall aimed to improve the efficiency of the logistics industry in India by extensively using technology. However, the market research showed that technology-driven services in logistics faced many challenges owing to low internet penetration in the country, weak network connectivity during transportation and the low literacy rates of the truck drivers who were central to this industry. Between 2015 and 2018, Truck Hall experimented with several business models including load board, brokerage and integrated transporter with the sole purpose of achieving profitable growth in a highly fragmented industry with razor-thin margins. This case documented the dilemma faced by a startup in a high-growth but largely unorganized and unregulated industry in a developing economy. Should Truck Hall continue with the current business model of being a niche player or should it vertically integrate and control major segments of the value chain? Should it compromise on growth to become profitable or first scale up?

This case study can be used at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

A buyer company has an advance payment stuck with the seller company and acts cautiously in not paying further till they get control over the goods. Claiming this to be a breach, the seller terminates the contract and makes claim for the damages. The seller picks all legal points it could in the routine business practices to escape the unfortunate situation. The judgment in the Toba Trade Case gives a comprehensive view of several legal themes including, payment and delivery, variation of contract, termination, anticipatory breach, award of damages and unjust enrichment.

Management of Innovation and Technology/Management Information Systems.

Information Systems.

SER (Sugar, Energy & Rum) was a company belonging to the Grupo Pellas Corporation. The company operated in four countries, had six subsidiaries, employed more than 25,000 people, had more than 43,500 manzanas of sugarcane crops in Nicaragua alone and had global annual sales of more than US$400m. In 2008, due to the negative effects of the crisis on the company’s business model (increasing costs due to higher prices for fuel and decreasing income because of low international sugar prices), the company decided to implement a business intelligence (BI) system to optimize its processes to reduce costs and increase productivity. At that time, the company had more than 100 years of data, information systems that fed into their main business processes and a culture that appreciated data as the basis for decision-making. However, there were inconsistencies among data systems, users received highly complex reports in Excel or green screens and process monitoring happened long after the tasks had been completed. As a response, SER used extract–transform–load to collect and clean data that would be used in the BI system (the case leaves the questions regarding the systems selection unsolved for discussion). Based on their business model, they selected the most critical processes and defined key performance indicators to measure the impact of changes in those processes. They considered graphic design as a tool to make the system more accepted by users and worked together with users so that reports only offered the most important information. The result was improved costs and productivity. They decreased manual time spent by 14 per cent, automated time spent by 10 per cent, and eliminated 1,556 hours of dead time for equipment in the field, which allowed them to increase productivity by US$1m just in sugar. They saved 20,000 trips from the fields to the factories, which represented more than US$1m in savings by monitoring the weight of wagons loaded with sugarcane in real time. They improved client perceptions about the company both locally and internationally by implementing a sugar traceability system.

The case “Business Intelligence at the Grupo Pellas SER Company” has as its objective to respond to the question: How does a company make its BI system implementation successful? As such, the case: Discusses what a BI system is and what it provides to a business analyses challenges, benefits and context when implementing a BI system; analyses success factors and recommendations in the BI system implementation process; analyses the process of implementing a BI and highlights the importance of the system priority questions and technological alternatives.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy

The case focuses on truck high idle time, truck detention, and enroute challenges faced by Nagpur Golden Transport Company, a trucking company with a fleet size of 150 trucks. Being in a highly competitive market, every single order not fulfilled by the transporter is an opportunity lost. How should NGTC use GPS data, MIS, and other freight transport technological capabilities in reducing truck idling times, and increasing trip revenues?

The learning outcomes are as follows: to describe the possible problems in cross hierarchical and cross-functional coordination; to illustrate the month/year-end closing operations related issues at logistics and warehousing end; to analyze the importance of supply chain resilience/ contingency plan; and to compare the role of the tradeoff in decision-making: ethics (policies) vs operations.

Mr Azhar Ali working as a regional distribution manager was waiting for the finalization of sales orders, it was the last working day of the financial year. He had to fulfill all the orders to achieve his personal and organizational goals. He was excited as he was supposed to be promoted and transferred to Head Office on a national role, after a successful annual closing. It was not too late when his excitement turned into anxiety when he received a never expected direct call from Director Sales. Around 7:00 p.m., he was informed of some new orders for an important institutional customer, which was out of his own region. The orders were placed in Ali’s region because of stocks’ availability. Ali had no time to plan this huge order and there were no dispatch trucks available at that time. Should Ali take risk of organizational goals and his promotion and cancel those orders? Should Ali generate sales invoices to record sales and dispatch the stocks on next day compromising the organizational core values and policies?

BBA.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and logistics.