Aligning strategies

In section 1.1 we showed the supply chain as a network of operating processes. In section 1.2 we emphasised the need to integrate these processes to maximise flow and focus on the end-customer. And in section 1.3 we saw how supply chains can choose to compete on a range of different competitive priorities. Now it is time to put these ideas together and show how strategies need to be aligned across the supply chain. 

If different links in the supply chain are directed towards different competitive priorities, then the chain will not be able to serve the end-customer as well as a supply chain in which the links are directed towards the same priorities. That is the basic argument for alignment in the supply chain (Cousins, 2005). Where the links are directed by a common and consistent set of competitive criteria, then that supply chain will compete better in the marketplace than one in which the links have different, conflicting priorities. This is the concept of focus.  

Focus is based on the view that you cannot be good at everything. For example, it is difficult to handle high volume, low cost products in the same channel to market as low volume, high variety products, for which flexibility is the name of the game. While the assembly line is the method of choice for manufacturing cars in volume, development of prototypes for new models is kept well away from the factory in special facilities imtil close to launch. This is because the development process demands quite different technical skills and equipment that are better physically separated from the more routine, efficient and repetitive assembly line. In the example of the standard shirts and fashion blouses in section 1.3, the associated operations processes would be kept separate ( focused ) for similar reasons. And the separation could be thousands of kilometres. Classic  

What happens when the processes are not aligned within a supply chain Let us address that question with Case study 1.4 to show the problems that can arise. 

Most of TA s customers made distress purchases - their car had broken down and they wanted it to be fixed quickly. So TA needed a fast replacement service from the local distributor. While the distributors both recognised the need for fast replacements, the performance of the purchasing department at the remanufacturer was measured on cost savings. Thus the component supplier thought that the name of the game was low cost. 

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A. W. Dunn, B. N. Cotier, A. Nogaret, P. Moriarty, P. H. Beton and S. P. Beaumont, Molecular scale alignment strategies An investigation of Ag adsorption on patterned fullerene layers, Appl. Phys. Lett. 71, 2937 (1997). 

Waterman algorithm uses DP to produce a quadratic-time solution to the local alignment problem. Thus, in most cases, both approaches are feasible, and the choice of alignment strategy is driven by the purpose of the pairwise comparison. 

Tan H, Lambrix P (2007) A method for recommending ontology alignment strategies. In Proceedings of international conference on semantic web (ICSW). LNCS, vol 4825. Springer,... 

What is the difference between a global and a local alignment strategy ... 

Align the molecules using some suitable alignment strategy (after conformational analysis, if required). 

Built on the concept of local alignments, FASTA (Lipman and Pearson, 1985) and BLAST (Altschul et al, 1990) provide increasingly rapid sequence alignments strategies and both can be executed via a personal computer. BLAST uses a heuristic approximation algorithm that gains speed at the expense of accuracy of result. The tool finds short... 

Gubman, E. (1998). The talent solution Aligning strategy and people to achieve extraordinary results. New York McGraw-Hill. 

Give examples from computational molecular biology when each of the following alignment strategies would he appropriate ... 

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