Understanding various Aspects of Logistics Management

Week 3 Chapter Questions Question 7-1 Demand management refers to the strategy a firm employs to determine the exact wants of customers. On the contrary, order management describes the various related processes such as organizing and tracking in the instances where clients place orders to when the final goods or services are delivered to them. Customer service points to the attempts by companies in ensuring that the clients are satisfied through the provision of additional facilities.

Customer service and order management describes the firms’ determination of whether or not the clients receive what they wanted. Overall, the three terms point to the approaches firms used to ensure that customers access their intended goods or services. Question 7-2 First, the cause and effect forecasting model assume the interrelation between one or more factors to aspects of demand. Further, it presumes that the cause and effect relationship can be employed for approximating the future demand. Examples of the model are the simple and multiple regressions.

Secondly, the time-series forecasting technique presumes the sole dependence of future demand on past demand (Murphy & Knemeyer, 2014). Examples of the model are simple moving and weighted moving averages. Thirdly, the judgmental forecasting entails the use of intuition and comes into play in instances of limited or no historical data. Examples of the techniques employed in the model are the analog strategy and surveys.

Question 7-19 The central issues related to measuring customer service include the following: · Arriving at decisions concerning the indicators to be employed for measurement that is easy to calculate and ascertain the importance of customer service to the business. · Determination of data sources to be employed, whether internal or external. It is critical that the sources be accurate, relevant, and justifiable to the study. · Moreover, counting on customer satisfaction through feedback does not also ascertain customer service.

In this case, most people would choose to remain mum regardless of whether or not they are satisfied. · Some people would choose not to contact the service providers in instances of dissatisfaction whereas others would endeavor to have such issues addressed. The difficulties in measuring customer service stem from its nature, as it is more of a qualitative attribute rather than quantitative. Question 11-3 The general functions of packaging include identifying the product, containing it, and protecting it from contamination or damage.

The issue of conflict could arise for the function of protecting the product when the product is too small or too big. In this case, it becomes harder to ensure that the product is kept together. Furthermore, it could prove difficult to pinpoint the product in such a case, an issue that conflicts with the function of packaging, which is identifying the product. Besides, the lack of protection during transportation for a product makes the activity of identification challenging.

Conflict may also arise in instances where attractive promotional messages are inscribed in the packaging boxes. As a result, this makes it easier for identification but brings forth security challenges as a thief could.