Mkt 421 - Supply Chain Mapping

Supply Chain

Dan Kirk

MKT/421

October 21, 2015

Meagan Jones

Supply Chain

For my supply chain mapping paper, I choose to map the making of an automobile.  In my paper, I will break down the manufacture, distribution, and retailer process involved with producing and selling new automobiles. “All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash, And we reduce that timeline by removing non-value added waste” (Taiichi, 1990).

The supply chain is a network of all the individuals, organizations, resources, and technology involved in the creation and sale of a product, from the distribution of materials to the manufacture to end point delivery of the finished product ("Supply Chain Definition", 2015).   There are three major steps in the supply chain process manufacture, distribution, and retail.

In the manufacturing process, we are taking our obtained raw materials and building our automobiles to be delivered to our retailers.  To manufacture an automobile a company must first obtain a large amount of steel.  The process of making steel comes with its process first iron ore must be mined from the ground.  After the iron ore is mined it is delivered to a mill's blast furnace where it is smelled and impurities are removed, and carbon is added to make steel.  Another step before the automobile plant receives the raw steel would be to develop a mold for the auto they will be building.  The automobile plant will need to start obtaining the other materials needed to build their new auto; also, some of those materials would include plastics, and vinyl’s ("How Stuff Is Made", 2015).

In the automobile business distributors and dealers are both part of the automobile supply chain.  The distributors are the wholesalers receiving the cars from the plants, and then they distribute the cars to the dealers who sell directly to the public.  One of the key differences between the distributor and the dealer are the distributor will maintain a parts inventory and the dealers concentrate on the customer’s needs.  Introducing a new model car is no small feat and takes three to five years design to prototype assembly.  Design and concepts for new models often come from the customer’s needs and wants.  One of the most difficult task involved with new model endeavor facing car builders is deciding what the public will want to drive in five years ("Distributorships And Dealerships," 2015).