...Iowa Elevators Case 1. What would be your analysis of the current situation from purchasing & inventory perspectives? As far as analyzing the current situation of the corporate spend, it would probably be best to start by looking at the categories that have the most expenses. In this case, the top three spend categories include farm supplies, transportation services, and MRO & construction. These three categories account for almost $600,000 of the $728,000 of the total annual spending (or about 80%). As far as purchasing is concerned, the company should probably look more into what is causing these numbers to be as high as they are and if there is any way to cut down on costs in some of these categories that account to most of the annual spend. As far as inventory is concerned, it was estimated that the average annual inventories in the farm supplies division (which has the largest amount being spent) was nearly $120 million with annual purchases of $310 million. These amounts have been broken down into four further categories and the inventory turn for farm supplies division is as follows: crop protection products: 1.9; equipment and supplies: 0.6; fertilizer: 6.2; and seed: 4.2. 2 & 3. What would you present to the executive team? (5-year plan—in terms of savings & numbers) What would be your annual cost savings estimates? As the specific numbers and information in this case is pretty limited, it is hard to be able to predict the savings for...
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...Summary: A summary of the current situation at Iowa Elevators from a purchasing and inventory cost perspective is that Iowa Elevators is currently in charge of two divisions—grain-handling and marketing and farm supplies and the company has been experiencing decreasing profitability. Scott McBride was asked to re-evaluate the purchasing department and implement a five year cost-savings plan to save the business. Analysis: Current Problems To get an understanding of the presentation I would give at the executive management meeting I have to outline the current problems at Iowa Elevator. There are currently five problems I have identified with Iowa Elevators. 1.) With human resources, there are currently certain staff members have too many roles. There are certain individuals responsible for supplier selection, product mix, branding, and promotion and assisted elevator and marketing center managers in the areas of promotion, new product development, and inventory planning. There are four managers who do all of these roles when in reality this role could be held by 6 different people. 2.) Another issue is that there is a surplus of suppliers. Currently there are 1,500 suppliers because purchasing is decentralized. The top 20 suppliers account for 45% of total purchases and the top 5 suppliers account for 35% of total purchases. Why are there 1,480 other suppliers? 4.) The numbers that Cathy collected are inaccurate. In exhibit 2, the total annual purchases showed an annual...
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...Iowa Elevators Case Study Iowa Elevators Executive Summary Iowa Elevators is one of the largest grain-handling companies in the United States exceeding $2.3 billion in revenues annually. It is also the employer of more than 2,500 employees. Iowa Elevators has recently experienced declining revenues over the past year as a primary result of drought conditions. Needless to say, the drought had a huge impact on crop production, hence setting in motion a need for change. Scott McBride, director of purchasing at Iowa Elevators, has been tasked with developing a plan to regain control of purchases made throughout the company in order to increase revenues and cut back on costs. With this in mind, Scott’s task was to develop and present a five year plan for the purchasing department. This plan would identify major issues in purchasing company wide, identify areas where cost could be cut. This would include reducing headcount, overhead expenses, and capital expenditure budgets. In Scott’s plan he would identify annual targets for achieving the reductions. Working with a team of acquisition specialists, sales representatives, and administrative offices, Scott began to work on a plan for cost reductions. Cathy, Scotts’ right hand purchasing analyst, began analyzing corporate spend which averaged $728 million with 20 of the 1,500 suppliers accounting for 45% of total spend and the top five represented 35%. This led to the perception of many things, including...
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...Sabor Inc. CENTRAL ISSUE: Sabor, Inc. is facing a potential shortage of supply of marconil, a new high-tech raw material for air filtration. During the past three weeks Sabor has been approached by three suppliers advising of this potential shortage and encouraging Sabor to sign long-term supplier contracts for the product to hedge against shortage. Sabor is not well-informed on the manufacturing process for marconil, however we are aware that two of the three component raw materials used to produce marconil are by-products from industrial processes and are reasonably stable. The third component raw material is the unknown. Further, we have heard rumors in a few years a much lower-cost substitute material for marconil might be developed. SIGNIFICANT FACTORS: 1. Potential interruption of supply of marconil (used for air filters) will have negative effect on sales revenues. 2. Current suppliers are pressuring Sabor to enter into long-term contracts. 3. Air filters currently represents 9% of corporate sales and is increasing 4. Current supply practice is to purchase needs on quarterly, semiannual or annual contracts. 5. Sabor is unknowledgeable in manufacturing process of marconil. 6. Rumors are that a lower-cost substitute for marconil will be developed in a few years. 7. Sabor air filters provide guaranteed continued sales volume for years due to replacement needs every six months 8. Marketing forecasts for moconil air filtration sales have been off-target (undervalued) ...
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...In this case the executives are looking for a five year purchasing plan aimed at making the company more financially profitable. The expectation is for purchasing to have a significant plan to deliver ways to save cost. This is where the greatest amount of the companies expenses come from. It is being asked to deliver how this goal can be met and what ideas are on the table to be visited for a successful cost saving plan. The executives are also asking another department to present the same five year plan. They have made it very clear that if major changes need to be made they aren’t afraid to do so. Iowa Elevators is a large operating company with huge financial success and annual revenue. With that in mind this company has the ability to implement several different kinds of organizational structures and departments. The best approach to starting the idea of cutting expenses and increasing revenue would be to become more centralized than in the past, but not 100% centralized at this point. This new structure would create two to three new divisions under Scott; a farm supplies purchasing department which would include a salaried manager, or a manager and two supervisors, an analyst, three buyers, an expediting clerk that cross trains as an invoice clerk or an invoice clerk. The larger farm supplies purchasing department would fully handle the purchasing of farm supplies. Taking the power away from the local managers and the product managers would give them the ability to...
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...Farm (Case from Accounting Text and Cases twelfth edition) Early in 2006, Denise Grey was notified by a lawyer that her recently deceased uncle had willed her the ownership of a 2,000-acre wheat farm in Iowa. The lawyer asked whether Grey wanted to keep the farm or sell it. Grey was an assistant vice president in the consumer credit department of a large New York bank. Despite the distance between New York and Iowa, grey was interested in retaining ownership of the farm if she could determine its profitability. During the last 10 years of his life, Jeremiah Grennell had hired professional managers to run his farm while he remained in semiretirement in Florida. Keeping the farm as an investment was particularly interesting to Grey for the following reasons. 1) Recent Grain deals with foreign countries had begun to increase present farm commodity prices, and many experts believed these prices would remain high for the next several years. 2) Although the number of small farms had decreased markedly in the last 20 years, Grennell’s use of mechanization and new hybrid seed varieties could be very profitable. 3) After some downward movement in the 1990’s the value of good farmland in Iowa was beginning to appreciate at about 10 percent a year. Included in the lawyer’s letter were data on revenues and expenses for 2005 and certain information on balance sheet items, which are summarized below Beginning Inventory 2005 Wheat production Shipped to grain elevator Grain...
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...Iowa Elevators Case 1. Where would you start? With which of the purchase categories? It is wise to look at which categories have the most expenses: which in this case is the farm supplies, MRO/Construction and transportation services. It seems that combined, they account for approximately 75% of overall annual expenses. One should analyze why they are so high. 2. How much money do you think you can save in each of the next five years? It is hard to predict the savings because of limited information but one can predict that once the targeted purchase categories are accounted for this savings can occur: Year 1: $0, Year2: $3mi, Year3:$6mi, Year4:$ 18mi and Year 5: $33million. 3. What are the inventory turns for farm supplies? What kind of improvements can be made in inventory management and how? The inventory turn for farm supplies are crop protection: 1.9, equipment and supplies: 0.60, fertilizer: 6.2 and seed: 4.2. Many improvements such as adding hybrid centralized- decentralized method to their supply management, hire specialists to only focus on managing supply and inventory rather than give managers too much power and overwhelm them and lastly increase inventory turnover especially on equipment and supplies since its very low but also targeting all farm supplies. Maybe the company can also increase supplier relationship and buy local. 4. Why hasn’t Scott McBride proposed a cost reduction plan in the past? Mr.McBride, the director of purchasing, has not proposed a...
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...Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan takes an in depth look of the history and sources of corn, a family farm in Iowa, and the economic pressures that influence farming and food policies. Part one showcases a captivating enlightening history with many descriptive qualities. Chapters one, two, and three are a perfect start to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in that they set up the re-occurring theme in the book: the conflict between the way farming should be done, and how economic survival dictates how it is typically done. However, this book might not be as appealing to others as it was to me. The first chapter is a about a particular piece of produce that is all around us: corn. Pollan reveals that on the forty-five thousand items in a supermarket, more than a quarter of them now contain corn in their ingredients. Through some historical analysis of how corn was first used by the Mayans, Pollan explains why corn is such a commanding crop and how its use was transferred to the surrounding colonists. In chapter two, Pollan shares his experience on a family corn farm in Iowa and how corn has changed farming and the landscape in the area. Chapter three is about the grain elevator and how this lowers the value of this particular vegetable, which was once highly praised by the Mayans. Next, we learn that large companies such as Cargill and ADM control the corns’ vague stages from elevators to feedlots. For two out of the three common expectations, chapters one, two, and three have exceeded my...
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...CASE STUDY 1 BUNGE LIMITED Jonathan West ‘We are at a very special moment in the history of Bunge. We have reached one plateau. Now, we need to go to the next round of change. We constantly need intellectual jolts to the company.’ (Alberto Weisser, CEO of Bunge Limited) In July 2002, Bunge, a global agribusiness and food company, announced that it would purchase Cereol, a global oilseed processor, based in France. The acquisition would transform Bunge, making it the world’s leading oilseed-processing company, and give it a more balanced geographic footprint, as well as access to new products, but would substantially increase the complexity of the company’s product lines, locations and personnel. Less than a year before, on 2 August 2001, Alberto Weisser, Bunge’s CEO, rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange, as Bunge successfully went public after more than 180 years as a private company. The company had primary operations in North and South America and worldwide distribution capabilities. Bunge was the largest processor of soybeans in the Americas and among the world’s leading exporters of soybean products. It was the largest fertiliser producer and supplier to farmers in Latin America. It was also a leader in vegetable oil and wheat-based food products for food manufacturers, food service companies1 and consumers. Bunge’s net sales in 2001 were $11.5 billion (see Exhibits 1 and 2 for Bunge’s financials). Bunge had undergone a dramatic transformation over...
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...Preface Every language allows different kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form of the standard national language and others. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some provinces of Canada. It is the official language of Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language and local dialects. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard literary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms. Standard English – the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms belonging to various local dialects. Local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television...
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...A ROAD MAP FOR NATURAL CAPITALISM Business strategies built around the radically more productive use of natural resources can solve many environmental problems at a profit. BY AMORY B. LOVINS. L, HUNTER LOVINS. AND PAUL HAWKEN O ARTWORK BY CRAIG FRAZIER N SEPTEMBER i6, 1 9 9 1 , 3. Small gTOUp of s c i c n t i s t s w a s Isealed inside Biosphere II, a glittering 3.2-acre glass and metal dome in Oracle, Arizona. Two years later, when the radical attempt to replicate the earth's main ecosystems in miniature ended, the engineered environment was dying. The gaunt researchers had survived only because fresh air had been pumped in. Despite $200 million worth of elaborate equipment. Biosphere II had failed to generate breathable air, drinkable water, and adequate food for just eight people. Yet Biosphere I, the planet we all 145 A ROAD MAP FOR NATURAL CAPITALISM of those services doesn't appear on the business balance sheet. But that's a staggering omission. The economy, after all, is emhedded in the environment. Recent calculations published in the journal Nature conservatively estimate the value of all the earth's ecosystem services to be at least $33 trillion a year. That's close to the gross world product, and it implies a capitalized book value on the order of half a quadrillion dollars. What's more, for most of these services, there is no known substitute at any price, and we can't live without them. Some very simple changes to the way we run our This...
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...essential goodness of humanity. The views of the Social Gospel movement were given formal expression in 1908 when the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America adopted what was later called "the social creed of the churches." Advocated in the creed were the abolition of child labor, better working conditions for women, one day off during the week, and the right of every worker to a living wage. With the rise of the organized labor movement in the early 20th cent. the Social Gospel movement lost much of its appeal as an independent force. However, many of its ideals were later embodied in the New Deal legislation of the 1930s New Nationalism was Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive political philosophy during the 1912 election. He made the case for what he called the New Nationalism in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in August 1910. The central issue, he argued, was human welfare versus property rights. He insisted that only a powerful federal government could regulate the economy and guarantee social justice. Roosevelt believed that the concentration in industry was not necessarily bad, if the industry behaved itself. He wanted executive agencies (not the courts) to regulate business. The federal government should be used to protect the laboring man, women and children from what he believed to be exploitation. In terms of policy, the New Nationalism supported child labor laws and a minimum wage laws for women. The book Promise of American Life, written by Herbert Croly, influenced...
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...The Wow Project In the new economy, all work is project work. And you are your projects! Here’s how to make them all go Wow! First appeared: FC24, p.116 BY TOM PETERS I learned about the future of work by living in the projects — the kind of projects you routinely do at a professional-services firm. More years ago than I care to remember, I reported to the offices of McKinsey & Co. in San Francisco for my first day as a professional management consultant. At 9 a.m., I started to work. At 3 p.m. that afternoon, I was on an airplane to Clinton, Iowa to work on a project that involved an investment in a $150 million petrochemical plant, and even if you’d spotted me four letters, I couldn’t have spelled “petrochemical.” But that was life — in the projects. Fast-forward 25 years. All white-collar work is project work. The single salient fact that touches all of our lives is that work is being reinvented. The workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers. For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it’s office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce. After decades of wholesale neglect, companies are finally facing the fact of pathetic white-collar productivity...
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...ORIGINAL XXX 1541-5147 ARTICLES International of Orem’s Self-Care Deficit Theory and Standardized Nursing Languages in a Case Study of a Woman With Diabetes IJNT Malden, USAJournal Inc Blackwell Publishing of Nursing Terminologies and Classifications Application of Orem’s Self-Care Deficit Theory and Standardized Nursing Languages in a Case Study of a Woman with Diabetes This paper aims to illustrate the process Coleen P. Kumar, RN, MSN, CNS, is Assistant Professor of Nursing, Kingsborough Community College, Brooklyn, New York. Introduction As the average lifespan is extended, more individuals are coping with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, which has reached epidemic proportions with more than 20 million people in the United States having this diagnosis (Gordois, Scuffham, Shearer, Oglesby, & Tobian, 2003). The American Diabetes Association (ADA) estimates that a million people will be diagnosed of diabetes every year (2004). Long-term complications of diabetes are costly to both the individual and the healthcare system. Over the past decade, diabetes research has focused on pharmacological approaches and lifestyle interventions to the illness (Odegard, Setter, & Iltz, 2006). Recent evidence in the forum of diabetes care revealed a need for healthcare professionals to assess and empower individuals in the self-management of this illness. For the purposes of this case study, health assessment by nurses was defined by Fuller and Schaller-Ayers (2000) as a process of systematically...
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...Part II Chapter Fifteen – The Maverick and His Meltdown Chapter Sixteen – Running Unopposed Chapter Seventeen – Slipping Nooses, Slaying Demons Part III Chapter Eighteen – Paris and Berlin Chapter Nineteen – The Mile-High Club Chapter Twenty – Sarahcuda Chapter Twenty-One – September Surprise Chapter Twenty-Two – Seconds in Command Chapter Twenty-Three – The Finish Line Epilogue – Together at Last Index Author’s Notes About the Authors Copyright About the Publisher Prologue BARACK OBAMA JERKED BOLT upright in bed at three o’clock in the morning. Darkness enveloped his low-rent room at the Des Moines Hampton Inn; the airport across the street was quiet in the hours before dawn. It was very late December 2007, a few days ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Obama had been sprinting flat out for president for nearly a year. Through all the nights he’d endured in cookie-cutter hotels during the months of uncertainty and angst —months of lagging by a mile in the national polls, his improbable bid for the White House written off by the Washington smart set, his self-confidence shaken by his uneven performance and the formidability of his archrival, Hillary Clinton—Obama always slept...
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