Logistics! Whooo....... and AAL (which is no crayon factory)

As much as I love logistics…

I think this trip is a great opportunity and I was really looking forward to learning about international business as it pertains to India (as they are becoming a major global player) our lecture on from the Operations Management prof, Dr. R. Jagadeesh, was a BIT dry. We are all business majors or have been working in the field and we know about supply chains and logistics.

To be honest, I didn’t write down much from this lecture because A.) I had POM and am familiar with supply chains (and it wasn’t a pleasant experience), and B.) we were supposed to be getting all these lectures electronically, because our world is so flat and everything is electronic for convenience and the leveling of the playing field.

What I wrote down, which I found to be most pertinent to international business in India were the challenges operations management is facing:
Globalization (join the club)
Shorter Response Time
Competition (Right, Infosys?)
Flexibiliby/Quality/Pricing
Demanding Customers (just because they are giving us their “hard earned” money they think they are SO entitled… Of course they are, I’m one of the first who will bitch.)
Information Revolution
New Original Networks (hmmm… that’s what was written… actually it was “Org’l”…….ah, got it “organizational”… thought you’d like that thought process…)
New Organizational Networks

If these lectures were more case studies than trying to cram as much information in slides as possible I think I would get more out of them.

Our site visit today was Automotive Axles. We met with the CFO, the director of HR and after our tour we had a question and answer with the CEO. Big-shots. They mentioned they had a lot of stock stored up because they didn’t want to run short which leads me to believe they probably have room to develop in their supply chain management.

Automotive Axles is a joint venture with Arvin Meritor, a US company, which has its manufacturing unit in Mysore. This is an example of offshoring, in which India’s cheap labor is being utilized, and at only 7%, why not? It’s really not good news for those working in manufacturing in the U.S. Sorry, guys, your jobs will be obsolete within the next couple years. That’s business.

I have personally never been on a factory visit in the States such as this one to compare it to, but those who have said the conditions were very good. I think the closest I’ve come to a factory visit is the Crayon episode of Mr. Rogers. Classic.