The fundamental model we teach MBAs for thinking about manufacturing is the value chain, a simple model that describes the value adding steps that take a low value material like iron ore and turn it into a high value product like a Ferrari Testarossa.
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Such limited customisation encourages a build-to-order model, without the need for a supply chain drowned by a huge number of parts.
However, such a model has placed tremendous stress on the supply chain and left companies with greater exposure to a range of unforeseen, disruptive risks.
As a business model, there is a lot of inefficiency built into the supply chain and replenishment process for these street vendors, since they reside a few notches down in the distribution system from the regular brick and mortar merchants with whom they compete.
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The company can manage its profit margins by raising prices on select items and by using a more flexible inventory and supply chain model to respond to cost pressures and new opportunities as they arise.
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To assure US supply chain security, ZTE offers US carriers its Trusted Delivery Model, a fully transparent and comprehensive review and monitoring system conducted by a highly respected independent US threat assessment laboratory.
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In a legal business model, all the creators in the musical chain are compensated.
That Europe hasn't realized the same type of productivity gains is partly a result of its reluctance to embrace the big-box retail model, one that allows a company to take full advantage of the world supply chain to obtain and sell goods cheaply.
The boutique hotel model changed this, typically offering luxury accommodations in locations more intimate than chain hotels, while carrying a nightclub feel.
These were good years, during which Dell became the world's largest and most profitable computer-maker, with a supply chain that was easily the most efficient in the industry, if not the world, and a direct-sales model that seemed to keep Dell one step ahead of rival companies selling computers through old-fashioned stores.
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But generally speaking the retail chain model is having trouble, hampered by factors like work rules set by state licensing boards, the cost of employing a nurse practitioner, getting private and public insurance to pay for it, and opposition from doctors groups that tried to get the chains thrown out of states like Illinois and New York.
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