Уч.пос. Кузякин А.С., Попова Т.Г. Английский язык для управления цепями поставок

d)use/work with

e)leaving / changing from

f)try to win

g)compared with

h)want

i)amount to

j)becoming more important on

Ex. 8 Listen to the dialogue ‘Dealing With Rising Production Costs’ and commentaries coming after it. Give English definitions to the words and expressions in bold print. Learn the dialogue by heart and dramatize it with another student in class.

Giovanni: There are no two ways about it. We have to raise prices.

Melanie: We can’t. We already raised prices earlier this year. Doing it again risks alienating our customers.

Giovanni: What else can we do? Our production costs have risen nearly 15 percent. We’ve tried absorbing them and offsetting them, but nothing has worked. Our profit margin continues to shrink and we don’t have any other choice.

Melanie: What about lowering the quality of our raw materials? We could use a cheaper supplier.

Giovanni: That’s a sure way to lose customers. If we start cutting corners on quality, our customers will leave in droves.

Melanie: What if we discontinue manufacturing some of the less popular items? That should save us some money.

Giovanni: Not enough. We either raise prices or stop production altogether.Melanie: There is one other option.

Giovanni: What?

Melanie: We could reduce our workforce.Giovanni: You mean fire people? That’s off the table!

(from ESL Podcast 952)

Ex. 9 Questions for discussion

1.Based on the information in the article and your own experience, explain why an efficient supply chain is essential for all kinds of businesses. Give examples.

2.Why is effective supply-chain management so important for European companies which source components from China and other parts of Asia?

3.Why does the supply chain become critical when manufacturers move away from vertically integrated production?

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4. The main reason for a global sourcing strategy is cost reduction. What are some of the hidden costs of this strategy?

Unit 2 Using the supply chain to increase sales

Adding value with the supply chain

by Jonathan Birchall

As the manager in charge of the world’s largest supply chain, Keith Harrison believes the time has come to give the business of logistics more credit. The Head of Global Product Supply at Procter & Gamble believes the search for a competitive edge will focus more on supply chain efficiency as retailers and suppliers battle huge increases in raw material and energy costs. 'Today you have road congestion, you have freight costs, driver shortages, capacity issues. Working capital is at a premium. Competition among retailers and vendors is higher. All of this is putting pressure on having a more efficient supply chain. This is more critical than it has been before.’

Since his appointment in 2001, Mr Harrison has been at the forefront of efforts to drive costs from P&G’s supply chain, helping the company meet its long-term sales and earnings growth targets, in spite of surging input costs. But he says P&G has also been looking increasingly over the past three years at ways to turn improvements in the supply chain into top-line sales growth. ‘We’re trying to make the supply chain into a growth engine for the company,’ he says. ‘A lot of the lime, supply-chain management is reactive, or passive, cost control. But we think there’s also an opportunity for us also to use the supply chain to create top-line growth as well as bottom-line performance.’

An effective supply chain helps manufacturers by reducing a retailer’s ‘out-of- stocks’, which in turn prevents lost sales. Those sales also benefit the retailer, while efficient delivery of products to meet demand can also reduce the costs of holding inventory to the retailer.

P&G is telling retailers that it should be rewarded for the benefits its supply chain delivers. ‘If I do something with my supply chain to reduce my customer's inventories, I want more than just the “supplier of the year” award,’ he says. How do we get that value that we’ve created at least partially reinvested in growing our business? Do we get sharper pricing, better features, more display, better shelving?’

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As an example of the potential benefits, Mr Harrison gives the example of a pilot project with Wal-Mart in the US, whose worldwide stores account for 15 per cent of P&G’s overall sales. The two established a cooperative relationship in the late 1980s, starting with Wal-Mart’s decision to allow P&G and other suppliers access to the customer sales data collected by its Retail Link computer system.

Over the past 12 months, a P&G factory in Missouri has been using live sales data from stores not to forecast demand but to schedule replenishment deliveries on a store-by-store basis for a single test product. Rather than shipping the required volume to a distribution centre, where it is then divided up for each store, the shipments are instead prepared at the factory for the right store. When the goods arrive at the Wal-Mart distribution centre, they are moved directly from P&G’s truck to the appropriate Wal-Mart truck, with no lime in storage. ‘It is assembled for a store, and it is just flowing through the system ,’ says Mr Harrison.

Kevin O’Marah, a logistics consultant at AMR Research, believes P&G is the first consumer goods company to use the Retail Link data in this way

Ex. 1 Translate the article above using the vocabulary and comments

goods to Wal-Mart stores.

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Ex. 3 Translate from Russian into English

1.Поиск конкурентных преимуществ будет направлен на повышении эффективности цепей поставок.

2.Проблемы, с которыми сейчас сталкивается бизнес, это заторы на дорогах, рост транспортных расходов, нехватка водителей, недостаточное использование производственных мощностей.

4.Предприятие P&G в Миссури использует оперативные данные из магазинов.

5.Партия груза компонуется для отдельного магазина и в таком виде проходит всю цепь.

Ex. 4 Find words or phrases in the article which fit these meanings.

1something that gives a company an advantage over others: c_________

e__________

2fight against: b____________

4in the leading position: a__ t____ f_______________

5rapidly increasing: s______________

6the way goods are arranged in a store so they are easily seen by customers: d______________

s_______ d_______

9replacement of what has been used or sold: r__________________

10put together in a certain way: a_______________

Ex. 5 Use the words and phrases in the box to complete the sentences.

1To keep costs down, it is important for retailers to keep their _____ levels as low as possible.

2If retailers carry too much stock, they will use a lot of their ________.

3A more cost-effective way to operate is to schedule ________ on a just-in-time

basis.

4If suppliers have live access to a customer's ________, they can prepare deliveries specially for each store.

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5Suppliers are also known as _______ .

6Delivering goods by truck now takes longer in many countries due to increased

_______.

7With rising oil prices, ________ are also going up.

8A traditional aim of supply-chain managers is _______, keeping costs down.

9P&G is using its supply chain to meet sales ________ .

Ex. 6 Complete the chart.

Ex. 7 Choose the best explanation for each phrase from the article.

1 ‘… capacity issues’…

a)problems about the company's expertise

b)problems about production volumes

2 ‘... input costs.’

a)costs of materials purchased by a company

b)costs of manpower employed by a company

3 ‘... top-line sales growth.’

a)increased sales turnover

b)better sales of the most profitable products

4 ‘... a growth engine for the company...’

a)something that will make the company bigger

b)something that will help the company increase sales

5 ‘... bottom-line performance.’

a)better sales of poor performing products

b)better profitability

6 ‘... sharper pricing...’

a)more competitive prices

b)more risky prices

Ex. 8 Use the passive form of the verb to describe a process. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct form of the passive.

Rather than shipping the required volume to a distribution centre, where it ____

then _______ (divide) up for each store, the shipments ___ instead _____ (prepare) at the factory for individual stores. So, when the goods arrive at the Wal-Mart

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Unit 3 The global supply chain

The logistics challenge of global business

by Martin Christopher

In little more than a generation, US-based sports company Nike Inc. reinvented the concept of the sports shoe. It transformed the cheapest of mass-market footwear into high-tech, high-performance products, with all the cachet of haute couture and carrying price tags to match.

Technologically, Nike’s products are leading edge, as is its brand-led marketing which successfully used sporting-superstar endorsement to establish the brand as an icon of youth subculture. However, as in any global organisation, logistics and the management of the supply chain is a crucial strategic issue at Nike.

From its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, Nike operates a globe-spanning virtual enterprise. At its core are a set of business processes, designed to combine its state-of-the-art R&D capabilities with a ruthlessly low-cost manufacturing strategy. The company outsources virtually 100 percent of its shoe production, for example, retaining in-house manufacturing of a few key components of its patented Nike Air System.

Nike's basketball shoe, for example, is designed in Oregon and Tennessee and developed jointly by Asian and US technicians in Oregon, Taiwan and South Korea. The shoes themselves are manufactured in South Korea (men’s sizes), and in Indonesia (boy’s sizes), from 72 components supplied by companies in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and the United States. Moreover, the complexity of the product means that it passes through more than 120 pairs of hands during the production process. It also means that there is a danger of extended lead times.

Tying the whole Nike enterprise together are information systems that co-ordinate each step of these far-flung activities, and a logistics infrastructure capable of bringing the components together at precisely the right time, as well as managing the supply of finished goods into the global marketplace.

Significantly, both are flexible enough to cope with the constant product, materials and process innovation, allowing the company to bring more than 300 new shoe designs to market each year. However, this punishing rate of innovation brings with it high levels of finished inventory if sales forecasts are not achieved.

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