A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer.
Motorola is investing more than US$60 million dollars over two years to manage its global supply chain from Singapore. Currently Motorola manages US$10 billion of activities each year in the supply chain operations, such as manufacturing and distributions. The investment will be spent not only on manpower, but also research and development. Motorola also hopes to work together with the local academia to enhance manufacturing processes.
By centralizing its supply chain operations in Singapore, Ed Zanders, Motorola’s CEO hopes to improve cost structure, enhance quality of manufacturing and bringing products faster into the market to achieve a world-class supply chain operation. By bringing products faster into the market so that consumers could buy them, Motorola can reduce its product cycles (amount of time needed to bring new products into the market) from 6-9 months. This will lessen their inventory and improve inventory turnover. Singapore will be a “control tower” where the transformation process of inputs into outputs (Motorola cellphones) will be monitored and controlled. This is the company’s strategy in order to become more competitive.
