Developing Global Supply Chain Manager for Business Expansion

Introduction

Globalization makes market becomes more competitive since nowadays the problem of geographical boundaries which hinders marketing of products and services can be overcome more easily. With the help of technological advancements, such as the internet and logistics, products and services can be marketed and consumed in any part of the world rather easily. Customers can freely choose the products and services based on their preferences on price, quality, or mode of acquisition (Morgan, 2003).

To win the competition in the global market, it is not enough for a company to operate on local level alone. Kiessling (2013) and Flint (2004) explain that with the global market, the products and services provided by MNCs can reach closer to customer value from all parts of the world. Compared to selling the product locally, global market shares are indeed much bigger. It has to operate globally, sell their products and services internationally. As an example, three brands which are produced by local companies but are already known as an international product, Nestle Coffee, Levi’s jeans, and Carrefour, have to compete with superstores such as Wal-Mart (Hammond and Grosse, 2003). Local companies have to think globally and slowly transform themselves to become Multinational Corporates (MNCs) (Hammond and Grosse, 2003; De Chiara and Spane, 2011). Multinational companies operate in multiple countries, and they move products, services, cultural styles, and economic power from one country to the others (Hammond and Grosse, 2003). For example, a German multinational engineering and electronics company, Robert Bosch GmbH, has established more than 350 subsidiaries across over 60 countries. Unilever, a London-based multinational consumer goods company, has created subsidiaries in at least 90 countries (Nguyen et al., 2015).

One of many ways for MNCs to be competitive is that the firm has to produce products and services which meet customers’ preferences, which are: having high quality with affordable price (Griffith, 2006). MNCs which operate in multiple countries can get 4 location advantages by utilizing different characteristic from each geography, which are: resources, efficiency, market, and strategic asset (Dunning, 1998; De Chiara and Spane, 2011). MNCs have to think and find another alternative of raw materials with affordable cost from other countries. They also have to consider ways to shorten their time cycle to deliver products to customers and to minimize logistics cost. In addition, as an effort in terms of resources and efficiency, they have to find operating locations which have lower labor and resource cost (De Chiara and Spane, 2011; Christopher et al., 2006).

The needs to think globally and act locally can be materialized by utilizing supporting concept of global supply management. The global supply chain in MNCs will force companies to pay attention to supply chain matrix to achieve cost reduction, better time utilization in production line, faster shipment, cheaper labors and satisfaction (Flint, 2004; Mollenkopf et al., 2010; Manuj and Mentzer, 2008).