Article Summary: Quantitative Decision- making
In the article by Root, (2020), the author talks about how Microsoft and FedEx come together and form one team in an effort to transform e-commerce with the hope that teaming up would give them an advantage over their biggest competitor, which is Amazon. They, therefore, come up with a product that they believe will make e-commerce more efficient for their customers, unlike the methods that get used by Amazon. This method, FedEx surround, is said to be able to give the customers more visibility into the chain of supply as well as better package tracking from the producers to the consumers. However, Amazon is a renowned and big organization that has a large number of loyal customers. The question that arises, therefore, is how the merger between Microsoft does and FedEx impacts the loyalty of Amazon’s customers, and how does it plan to structure itself in the market to gain a competitive advantage over Amazon?
The article by Lyall et al. (2018) addresses the aspect of the continued developments in technology and how it will impact supply chain management. While most people talk about the disadvantages of technology in replacing human labor, this article focuses on the advantage technology will have on supply chain management in the sense that it will create job opportunities as data analysts will be required to analyze the data that gets generated by the particular technology. Another advantage is that despite replacing human labor, artificial intelligence and robotics will play a key role in making processes like invoicing, purchasing, and other tasks faster and easier. The question that arises, in this case, is, what are the other opportunities that will be created by the change in supply chain management, especially with regard to employment in other sectors?
References
Lyall, A., Mercier, P., & Gstettner, S. (2018, June 15). The Death of Supply Chain Management. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/06/the-death-of-supply-chain-management (Links to an external site.)
Root, A. (2020, May 18). FedEx Teams Up With Microsoft to Fight Amazon. That’s Good for FedEx Stock. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://search-proquest-com.unh.idm.oclc.org/usnew.