Assignment 3

Justin Olsen

IST 1100

Module 3

Offshoring is when a company relocates a factory to a different country. This is usually done for the same reasons that outsourcing is done. Countries such as China have low wage workers, lower taxes, and other cost cutting measures. Offshoring is different from outsourcing in that outsourcing is just one task while offshoring is every task.  For example Dell    outsources their technical support while keeping the design process and manufacturing here in the United States. Electronic Arts on the other hand, moves their entire facility to China. Offshoring has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand a company has cheap labor, on the other hand, the customers are not happy with working conditions that are less than ideal.

A supply chain is every part of making a product from start to finish. As an example of a supply chain let's look at a happy meal toy. The process starts with a factory collecting and making the plastic required. This plastic is then shipped to a factory to be melted into whatever shape the creators want. The finished product is shipped to a McDonald's and sold to a customer. Supply chains make it so that one corporation does not need to manage every part of the process.  Wal-Mart uses supply chains to their advantage. They have various companies compete to be part of the Wal-Mart supply chain. Every company wants part in this because of the high profits so Wal_Mart gets the lowest prices from all of them. Wal-Mart also uses supply chains to feed demand. The book talks about how they observe what sells best where and ships more product to those locations.

Google could be one of the most influential companies in recent times. The internet made information accessible to some, web browsers made information easier to get but Google and other search engines made it so that we could find the information scattered across the web. Now that all information has become easily accessible companies have to work knowing that anyone can know anything about them and the companies can know anything about anyone. This is a double edged sword. By knowing everything about everyone companies can choose who to hire based on how people act online. On the other hand, this means that anyone can easily see if a company is doing anything that they should not be doing and easily find weaknesses in the company. It is amusing reading how Friedman talks about how everyone will have a device in their pocket connected to the internet considering the fact that the iPhone was released a year later and now everyone owns a smartphone of some sort.