Teaching Case – Apple Inc: Global Supply Chain Management
Once again this year, an SCM-related teaching case received an award at the Case Center Awards and Competitions: It is entitled Apple Inc: Global Supply Chain Management and written by P. Fraser Johnson. In this case, students are placed in the role of Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who has to make a strategic decision about the company’s complex supply chain. “Set in early 2020, it provides a detailed description of the company’s supply chain network and capabilities. Data in the case allows students to develop an understanding of Apple’s source of competitiveness and to gain insights into the management of a large, complex global supply chain network that focused on the intersection of services, hardware and software. Students will obtain an understanding of the supply chain challenges faced by Apple, in the context of supporting its corporate strategy and growth objectives.” I am sure that this case can be integrated very well into many undergraduate and postgraduate courses. This case nicely complements the 2020 award winner Apple and Conflict Materials: Ethical Sourcing for Sustainability. See also the 2017 and 2018 SCM-related winners.
The Most Popular Supply Chain Class Readings
Have you ever wondered what supply chain literature is most commonly used in the classroom? Open Syllabus, a non-profit research organization, currently has a corpus of nine million English-language syllabi from 140 countries and data on class readings is available for a large proportion of these syllabi. I checked which readings with the term “supply chain” in the title are used the most in the “Business” category. Here are the top 15 readings (from highest to lowest appearance count; only first authors/editors): Chopra (1,380 appearances), Christopher (1,361), Jacobs (1,246), Simchi-Levi (1,148), Chopra (608), Bowersox (595), Lysons (503), Lalwani (484), Cousins (463), Russell (447), Coyle (387), van Weele (372), Monczka (365), and Krajewski (359), Cachon (329). These books are great, otherwise they wouldn’t be so popular. It is noteworthy though that Western and male perspectives on supply chains clearly dominate, despite calls for more diverse perspectives. I could also have imagined at least a few more critical and sustainability-focused books in the list. Of course, my simple approach has limitations due to the search for only one term and, therefore, some books may have been overlooked. Also, I have not cleaned the data, which may be why Chopra appears twice.
Writing Skills: Cohesion and Coherence
Something that I, as a reviewer and editor, have unfortunately seen too often in academic manuscripts is a lack of cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is the glue that holds sentences together. Coherence makes sure ideas connect to create a clear “whole”. In this video, Write to the Top looks at the elements that create strong cohesion and coherence.
