Special Issue on Managing and Measuring Sustainability

Question: Discuss about the Special Issue on Managing and Measuring Sustainability. Answer: Introduction Starbucks is a global coffeehouse that was started in 1971. The company is the largest premium coffeehouse outlet in the world by number of outlets and customers served. The company has its headquarters in Seattle in Washington. Starbuck India was started in 2012 by a joint venture of Starbucks Corporation and Tata Coffee. The joint venture was branded Starbucks a Tata Alliance. The venture has its headquarters in Mumbai and operates 73 stores in India. The company is lead by Sumi Ghosh as the CEO (Giammona Patton, 2017). The company products include coffee, tea, smoothies, pastries and frappuccino beverages. Starbucks coffee cup requires high quality roosted coffee to prepare. This involves supply of coffee beans that are in different categories and require procurement department management to ensure supplies meet and exceed customers expectation of high quality coffee. The beans coffee has to be collected from the farm, to factory and finally to Starbucks coffeehouses. The procurement department has to manage the process to ensure that high standards are met in the three key categories. This management involves ensuring right coffee harvest, high standards factory processing procedures are met and transport and delivery to the coffeehouse store are timely and good state. The Starbucks Coffee supplier is Tata Coffee. Tata Coffee has the largest plantation in Asia and produces more than 10000 million tons of coffee. Tata Coffee produces both Arabica and Robusta. The producer has 19 estates in South India. The supply market of Starbuck India is based on a strategic alliance between the Sta rbucks Corporation and Tata coffee. There is importance of sourcing coffee beans from the Tata coffee to enable quality and standards quality for the supplies acquired by the company ("Global Responsibility Report Goals Progress 2014", 2017). The company supplier selection is based on the supplier capacity and relationship that existed before the Starbuck venturing to Indian market. Tata coffee has had a good record of supplying coffee been for Starbucks for several years and this has built a strong relationship that has led to joint venture. Therefore, the Starbuck India has a good developed practices with it supplier that have existed of a long period of time. The company faces supplier related challenges on increasing operational costs and quality control inconsistency. The company supply chain has an opportunity to lower costs related to acquiring supplies by The key supplier related challenges are high cost, third party logistics and weak quality control implementing a simpler supply chain program that is cost effective and easy to monitor. Operational Cost Starbucks targets coffee lovers who have strong preference to taste and quality. Starbucks main customers are middle class urbanites who are between 25-40 years of age. These customers are located in urban centers and have relative high income and are engaged in professional careers. These customers make 49% of the total customers who attend the companys stores. The company also has young adults make 40% of their key customers ranging from 18-24 years of age (Bag, 2016). The company uses Rule based Forecasting demand technique. This technique allows managers to integrate their knowledge on specific location and make decision of the forecasted demand. This technique uses time series data that enable creation of trends and extrapolate on the current situation. The technique is used in all stores and is appropriate for it allows managers meet specific demand for specific locations and time. The use of the same technique to forecast demand is to increase store managers responsibilities in order to enable full exploitations of opportunities in different locations. Starbucks uses office automation and manual monitoring inventory techniques to manage inventory. The inventory is linked to the supply chain and other offices in the company enable a comprehensive reporting and decisions on inventory. These inventory techniques ensure that the company minimizes running out of stock out and there is continuous supply of coffee beans to all stores. The company challenge on demand technique is that it lacks uniformity and largely depends on managers abilities. The inventory technique has a challenge of treating all stores equally which is not the case in the store. There is a difference in demand across the stores of different locations. Information Issues The bullwhip effect has been experienced in the Starbucks supply chain for the past 4 year. This effect was experienced when the supplies failed to meet demand for the growing number of stores across the country. The Company expanded rapidly with an average of 25 new stores per year though this slowed down in 2016 year. This was caused by failed communication on the company aggressive plan for expansion. This strained the companys supply chain capacity. The bullwhip was remedied by adoption of installation of integrated information resources that enabled dissemination of information to all stakeholders. The company uses several information technological tools to enable communications across partners and decision making across the supply chain. The company uses bar coding to manage logistic systems in the supply chain. The company also uses internet and websites services for communicating along the supply chain. These IT tools enable communication of valuable information about demand, forecasts, transportation and inventory. The company has collaboration in its supply chain that requires production, processing and preparing of products that adhere to Food Safety and standards Authority of India (FSSAI). This collaboration regulates the processes that are used and combination of nutrients that the company uses in preparing team to ensuring customers get products that are of high quality and generally accepted. This collaboration poses a challenge of implementation and requires the company to invest resources to ensure the regulation is adopted across the supply chain. The program offers an opportunity for more customers as a result of acceptability in the Indian coffee industry. Steps frameworks assessment Quality: The Company has formed a partnership alliance with it key supplier Tata Coffee. This allows the company to enjoy excellent quality and is able is stimulate continuous improvement. Delivery: This involves on time delivery and ability to respond to shortages. The Starbucks supplier is keen to supply bean coffee on time and is hard to adjust to shortages. Technical support: The Starbucks supply chain responds actively to technical changes or problems to ensure innovative techniques are 9imlemented and employees have proper training. Collaboration: The companys suppliers are keen to ensuring customer expectations are met. The suppliers care for customers and there is good teamwork and effective communication. Cost: Starbucks suppliers work in partnership with the company to reduce the operational cost across the supply chain. From the 9 step framework analysis it can be said that Starbucks suppliers in the supply chain have a good integration that can be rated as partner relationship. The technical support assessment can be expanded using Triple A supply chain key tenets. The technical support can is agile and is able to quickly respond and adopt new innovative methods and techniques. The supply chain can be said to be adaptable technical support that is ready to change and use other methods that are more cost effective. Lastly, the technical support of Starbucks is aligned to the companys objectives and goals that ensure customers get deliveries in the most innovative way the meets and exceed expectations (Siddhartha Sachan, 2016). Sustainability issues The company is involved in ensuring sustainable supply chain. The company has started a program to plan 100000 coffee trees that are of high quality. This will ensure sustainability of the company in the future. The company also has implemented a C.A.F.E practices across the supply chain to ensure that all it coffee is ethically sourced. The sustainability implementation and integration can be assessed using a trigger model. The external drivers toward sustainability in Starbucks are uncertainties in the supply chain. These uncertainties have been addressed in sustainably by adopting a program of partnering with suppliers, forecasting demand and adoption of appropriate information systems that enable communication and sharing of valuable information (Lee Kashmanian, 2013). The internal drivers that trigger sustainability are anticipation for benefits and customer orientation in the company. Starbucks has implemented employee program that rewards and allows employees to work comfortably in their workplaces (Shahabi, Emami, Monnavari Ghods, 2014). The company has also adopted regulations that are contained in FSSIA act to ensure it prepares meals that have ingredients allowed by the act. Therefore, the Starbucks sustainability supply chain integration is based on inter customer and supplier integration to enhance sus tainability of the company gin the future. From the analysis in this report, Starbucks Tata alliance has a stable supply chain. The company started it operations in October 2012 and has grown number of stores to 84 outlets. The company has partnered with Tata coffee that has several coffee plantations in south India. The supply chain involves transportation of coffee beans from the farm to the factory and finally to the Starbucks Stores. The coffee beans are harvested and transported to the factory where they are processed. From this point, the processed coffee is supplied to the Starbucks outlets. The roosting of coffee is done either in the factory or in the Starbuck Stores. The Starbuck Coffeehouses are located in urban areas that have middle class people. Starbuck coffeehouse target high income individual in the society. Starbuck Stores main customers are adult between 25-40years of age. The company supply chain is based on a strategic alliance that allows the company to have stable supplies. The company has a partnership relationship and there is high collaboration across the supply chain that seeks to meet customer expectation. The company has information system to enable communication and exchange of valuable information across the supply chain. Therefore, it can be said that Starbuck India has a stable and reliable supply chain. The Starbucks supply chain need improvement to help address the challenges in the taking the existing opportunities. The improvement program will address cost effectiveness and quality control in the supply chain. The improved program will allow the Starbucks supply chain lower it cost of operation and increase quality control. A quality control department will be set in the supply chain to allow monitoring and controlling of coffee to ensure quality product is delivered to the Starbucks and they meet customers expectation. References Bag, S. 2016. Flexible procurement systems is key to supply chain sustainability. 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