In Kiki Shi’s blog “How Will Samsung Explosion Affect Itself”, she mentioned effects from three aspects: profits, brand reputation and market share. After reading her blog, I’d like to share my thoughts on management.

As a international brand from a small country, Samsung is always regarded as the best example of enforcing globalization. The Galaxy7 defeat of Samsung made me think about the supply chain management model, and controlling the risks from globalization.

As well all know, vertical production line consist one dominant factor of Samsung’s success. Chips, storage, screen and battery are all manufactured by Samsung mobile phone itself. Vertical production mode largely helped Samsung adopt the rapidly changing condition in the consumer electronics industry, as a result Samsung can always launch new products one step ahead comparing to its competitors. However, the risks are also magnified as the explosion happened. Just think, if Samsung gives authorization of battery production to a leading supplier, is it possible that the supplier will more focus on the quality of battery produced instead of giving in to meet the time limit of launching a new product.

In addition, it is my personal view that Samsung’s core of the selling points are basically the design of phones and marketing rather than quality. In this saturated mobile phone market, the time to market decides the fortune of the product. Since Samsung is always taking its competitors(Apple) as the ruler, the products’ culture is apparently seeking for quick wins. Such products’ culture breaks the standard for its manufacture and it is also revealed that Samsung chooses the market instead of quality in this competition.

One other dominant competitor of Samsung—Huawei, did not gloat and saw the potential risk of globalization from Samsung’s explosion. The CEO of Huawei also said that Samsung’s defeat is not an opportunity but a warning. In this day and age, such emergency like explosion of Samsung may lead to chain reaction and combined effects. Such event gives higher standard of dealing with issues. Also, aiming to produce a standardized and global product, companies need to aggregating resources on certain products, which decrease the cost and lead to higher efficiency.

To conclude, I believe it is only the stepping up efforts in quality that would help Samsung to gain its dominant position in the market. (384 words)

 

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2016/09/04/samsung-note7-battery/#320f64e21eb2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Electronics

http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/sustainability/suppliers/