Planning the Inventory Resources in Logistics

Planning is extremely important when it comes to inventory resources. The lack of planning can be costly to the firm either because of the carrying and financing costs of excess inventory or the lost sales from inadequate inventory. The inventory requirements to support production and marketing should be incorporated into the firm’s planning process in an orderly fashion. The production side: Every product is made up of a specified list of components. The planner must realize the different mix of components in each finished product. Each item maintained in inventory will have a cost. This cost may be based on volume purchases, lead time for an order, historical agreements or other factors. Each component can be assigned a value. Once the mix is known and each component has been assigned a value, the planner can calculate the materials cost. The marketing side: The second step in inventory planning involves a Continue reading

Defensive Strategies Against Hostile Takeovers

With the development of economy and technology, competition among enterprises is becoming increasingly intense. Many companies decide to expand their companies scale and business through mergers and acquisitions to achieve maximum profits. Takeover is a business behavior that one company is purchased by another one. There are several types of takeover, including friendly takeovers, hostile takeovers, reverse takeovers and back-flip takeovers. Even though some mergers and acquisitions can bring about synergy and more substantial profits, some takeovers are not welcome. Therefore, a large numbers of measures are taken by target companies to defend the hostile takeover. Different Types of Defensive Strategies  Against Hostile Takeovers Defensive strategies can be classified into active measures and preventive measures. Active measures consist of greenmail, standstill agreement, white knight, and so on, while preventive measures are made up of poison pills, people pill and other defenses. In particular, greenmail, poison pills, staggered board terms and Continue reading

3 Important Categories of Logistics

Logistics is the process of accurately interpreting customer requirements or orders or marketing strategy, as also providing manufacturing operations support, with precise execution of the process of reaching the product material from the point of origin to the point of requirement consumption ensuring suitable care of the product material throughout to avoid damage deterioration, continuously ensuring the lowest possible cost throughout the process. Logistics is concerned with getting products and services where they are needed when they are desired. The responsibility of logistics is the temporal and spatial positioning of raw materials, work in progress, and finished inventories when and where required. Integrated logistics support, when properly understood and applied, can provide the means to identify and resolve many logistic problems, frequently before they developed. Logistics, in the broadest sense of the word, can be considered as scope of activity comprised of three major areas or subsets. Subsistence logistics, Operation Continue reading

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – Definition, Perspectives and Approaches

A company must make a competitive return for its shareholders and treat its employees fairly. A company also has wider responsibilities. It should minimize any harm to the environment and work in ways that do not damage the communities in which it operates. This is known as corporate social responsibility. Bowen argued that corporate social responsibility rests on two premises: social contract, which is an implied set of rights and obligations that are inherent to social policy and assumed by business, and moral agent, which suggests that businesses have an obligation to act honorably and to reflect and enforce values that are consistent with those of society. Companies that operate in a socially responsible way strengthen their reputations. In business, reputation is everything. It determines the extent to which customers want to buy from you, partners are willing to work with you and your standing in the community. Corporate Social Continue reading

Organizational Culture – Meaning, Characteristics, Importance and Dimensions

Organizational culture is the set of values that states what an organization stands for, how it operates and what it considers important.  Edgar  H.  Schein  defines organizational culture as the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered and developed while learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. All the above definitions stress acceptable and unacceptable behavior of its members. For instance, one organization might value solidarity and loyalty to organization more than any other value whereas another organization might stress on good relations with customers. Such values are part of organizational culture in spite of not being formally written like rules and regulations of the organization. They do not usually appear in the organizational training program and in fact, many organizations have difficulty in expressing their cultural values. However, an organization’s values automatically enter every employee’s personal values and actions over Continue reading

Cost Reduction – Meaning and Techniques

Meaning of  Cost Reduction A cost reduction program is a type of method which is to improve profitability of the organization or by expected to get a good result that flow to the bottom line of the financial statement and exempted from any serious damage to the organization itself. As this program is much more about reducing cost or reducing expenses of the organization, so a good cost reduction program is all about how to control the damage of an organization. Furthermore, a cost reduction program is said to be improve the profitability of an organization because by reducing expenses, profits are increased without making others changes. On the other hand, if the cost reduction program can matched with a sales improvement program and perhaps, finally it will get the double profit. A cost reduction program must be a complete plan that is results-oriented. A structured cost reduction program will Continue reading