The Saddle Creek Corporation has been known as a logistics organization for quite long. The company exports a variety of products, including food. The firm has been delivering impressive results over the past few years; despite the need to apply significant changes to its operational processes and values, the firm still managed not merely to stay afloat but also to succeed in expanding into the global market due to a good choice of a supply management strategy based on the principle of sustainability.
The challenges, which the Saddle Creek Corporation (SCC) has to face when operating in the context of the global economy, are quite numerous. First and most obvious, the fact that the company has to enhance its capacity rates deserves to be mentioned. The specified requirement stems from the fact that there is an obvious lack of connection between the elements of the food industry (Saddle Creek Corporation, 2007). Because of the rapid increase in demand and the requirements for the product quail along with the necessity to ship the goods to a variety of destinations, SCC has to accommodate its clients.
Another essential change, which SCC had to introduce into its framework, the need to upgrade the firm’s core competencies needs to be brought up. According to a recent report, becoming a member of the global economy triggered the need for SCC to update its competencies and standards (Saddle Creek Corporation, 2007). The process in question can be viewed as rather challenging since the improvement of the organization’s quality standards means investing in staff’s professional growth and technology development (Chakravarty, Grewal, Sarker, & Sambamurthy, 2014).
According to the report, regular updates of the technology and equipment used by the staff of the entrepreneurship allow maintaining the quality of the services high: “In applying warehouse automation to improve the quality and productivity of operations, the real bang for the buck appears to show up in picking and shipping” (Saddle Creek Corporation, 2007, p. 8).
One must admit, though, that the specified challenge is one of the hardest to face since the quality of the transportation services makes only a fraction of what the regular updates of technology contribute to. Apart from allowing the firm to retain its reputation of a high-quality service provider, the approach in question can be deemed as rather reasonable in the environment of the global economy and rather stiff competition. The approach taken to boost the evolution of the employees has also contributed to SCC’s triumph; indeed, outsourcing as a means to expand employees’ experience and introduce them to new information can hardly be overrated.
Finally, cross-docking needs to be listed among SCC’s key advantages. Creating premises for rapid provision of services, it makes SCC unique, as it “shifts the focus from ‘supply chain’ to ‘demand chain’” (Saddle Creek Corporation, 2007, p. 5), thus, making it possible to meet the requirements of a wider range of customers.
Due to an elaborate supply management chain and the concept of sustainability included into the organization’s framework, Saddle Creek Corporation has been thriving in the realm of global economy. Although the development of food industry presupposes that the firm will have to face an increasingly big amount of challenges as it progresses in the global economy, the sustainable use of resources as well as an adequate choice of the leadership strategy provides strong premises for the further evolution of the organization, making it competitive in the realm of the global economy.
Reference List
Chakravarty, R., Grewal, I., Sarker, S., & Sambamurthy, V. (2014). Choice of geographical location as governance strategy in outsourcing contracts: Localized Outsourcing, global outsourcing, and onshore outsourcing. Customer Needs and Solutions, 1(1), 11–22. Web.
Saddle Creek Corporation. (2007). 2007 food logistics industry report. Lakeland, Florida: Saddle Creek Corporation. Web.