In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) deals with a system of procurement, operations management, logistics and marketing channels, through which raw materials can be developed into finished products and delivered to their end customers. A more narrow definition of supply chain management is the "design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronising supply with demand and measuring performance globally". This can include the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, finished goods, and end to end order fulfilment from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Interconnected, interrelated or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses combine in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain.
A server is a computer that provides information to other computers called "clients" on computer network. This architecture is called the client–server model. Servers can provide various functionalities, often called "services", such as sharing data or resources among multiple clients or performing computations for a client. A single server can serve multiple clients, and a single client can use multiple servers. A client process may run on the same device or may connect over a network to a server on a different device. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers.
Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Thomas Loren Friedman is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues.
Outsourcing is a business practice in which companies use external providers to carry out business processes that would otherwise be handled internally, or in-house. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another.
Collaboration is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition and rewards when facing competition for finite resources.
Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state governments may also employ offshoring. More recently, technical and administrative services have been offshored.
The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization is a 1999 book by Thomas L. Friedman that posits that the world is currently undergoing two struggles: the drive for prosperity and development, symbolized by the Lexus LS, and the desire to retain identity and traditions, symbolized by the olive tree.
Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than its individual users. Enterprise software is an integral part of a computer-based information system, handling a number of business operations, for example to enhance business and management reporting tasks, or support production operations and back office functions. Enterprise systems must process information at a relatively high speed.
Inventory control or stock control can be broadly defined as "the activity of checking a shop's stock". It is the process of ensuring that the right amount of supply is available within a business. However, a more focused definition takes into account the more science-based, methodical practice of not only verifying a business's inventory but also maximising the amount of profit from the least amount of inventory investment without affecting customer satisfaction. Other facets of inventory control include forecasting future demand, supply chain management, production control, financial flexibility, purchasing data, loss prevention and turnover, and customer satisfaction.
Conceptual economy is a term describing the contribution of creativity, innovation, and design skills to economic competitiveness, especially in the global context.
Postponement is a business strategy employed in manufacturing and supply chain management which maximizes possible benefit and minimizes risk by delaying further investment into a product or service until the last possible moment, or where a manufacturer produces a generic product, which can be modified at a later stage before the final distribution to the customer. An example of such a strategy is Dell Computers' build-to-order online store. One of the earliest references to the concept was in a paper by Walter Zinn and Donald J. Bowersox in the Journal of Business Logistics in 1988, which highlighted five types: labelling, packaging, assembly, manufacturing and time postponements.
Information technology law, also known as information, communication and technology law or cyberlaw, concerns the juridical regulation of information technology, its possibilities and the consequences of its use, including computing, software coding, artificial intelligence, the internet and virtual worlds. The ICT field of law comprises elements of various branches of law, originating under various acts or statutes of parliaments, the common and continental law and international law. Some important areas it covers are information and data, communication, and information technology, both software and hardware and technical communications technology, including coding and protocols.
A supply chain attack is a cyber-attack that seeks to damage an organization by targeting less secure elements in the supply chain. A supply chain attack can occur in any industry, from the financial sector, oil industry, to a government sector. A supply chain attack can happen in software or hardware. Cybercriminals typically tamper with the manufacturing or distribution of a product by installing malware or hardware-based spying components. Symantec's 2019 Internet Security Threat Report states that supply chain attacks increased by 78 percent in 2018.
Pankaj Ghemawat is an Indian-American economist, professor, global strategist, speaker and author known for his work in the study of globalization. He created the DHL Global Connectedness Index and the CAGE Distance Framework.
The capitalist peace, or capitalist peace theory, or commercial peace, posits that market openness contributes to more peaceful behavior among states, and that developed market-oriented economies are less likely to engage in conflict with one another. Along with the democratic peace theory and institutionalist arguments for peace, the commercial peace forms part of the Kantian tripod for peace. Prominent mechanisms for the commercial peace revolve around how capitalism, trade interdependence, and capital interdependence raise the costs of warfare, incentivize groups to lobby against war, make it harder for leaders to go to war, and reduce the economic benefits of conquest.
Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures. The idea of cultural globalization emerged in the late 1980s, but was diffused widely by Western academics throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. For some researchers, the idea of cultural globalization is reaction to the claims made by critics of cultural imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s.
The CAGE Distance Framework identifies Cultural, Administrative, Geographic and Economic differences or distances between countries that companies should address when crafting international strategies. It may also be used to understand patterns of trade, capital, information, and people flows. The framework was developed by Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at the University of Navarra - IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.
Jeffrey Adgate "Jeff" Dean is an American computer scientist and software engineer. Since 2018, he has been the lead of Google AI. He was appointed Alphabet's chief scientist in 2023 after a reorganization of Alphabet's AI focused groups.
Sanjay Ghemawat is an Indian American computer scientist and software engineer. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Google in the Systems Infrastructure Group. Ghemawat's work at Google, much of it in close collaboration with Jeff Dean, has included big data processing model MapReduce, the Google File System, and databases Bigtable and Spanner. Wired have described him as one of the "most important software engineers of the internet age".
