“A supply chain consists of all stages involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer request. The supply chain includes not only the manufacturer and suppliers, but also transporters, warehouses, retailers, and customers themselves.”—From Chopra and Meindl (Chopra, Sunil, and Peter Meindl, 2015, Supply Chain, 6th Edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., Chapter 1).

“A typical supply chain begins with the ecological, biological, and political regulation of natural resources, followed by the human extraction of raw material, and includes several production links (e.g., component construction, assembly, and merging) before moving on to several layers of storage facilities of an ever-decreasing size and increasingly remote geographical locations, and finally reaching the consumer.” – From Wikipedia, May 7, 2021.

From the information you learned by reading Chapter 1 of Essentials of Supply Chain Management, 4th Edition by Michael H. Hugos (referenced in D2L, Module #1, Resources, and Lectures), you should have a basic understanding of the supply chain. This assignment provides you the opportunity to:
• Appreciate what a supply chain is and what it does
• Understand where your company (or a company of your choosing) fits in the supply chains it participates in and the role it plays in those supply chains.

Assignment: Consider and understand where your company (if you are currently employed) or a company of your choosing (if you are not currently employed) fits in the supply chain it participates in and the role it plays in the supply chain. Create a document explicitly following the instructions below:

1. Create a Microsoft Word file.
   • Only MICROSOFT WORD COMPATIBLE FILES WILL BE ACCEPTED. All other file formats (*.pdf, *.pages, *.xls, *.ppt) will not be graded)
2. Your document must include the following four sections, appropriately labeled with headers:
   • Introduction to the Company – include the company background (e.g., company name, location, industry, products or services provided, etc.) (Maximum value earned = 2 points).

• Supply Chain Functions – Classify your company according to one or more of the functions listed in the chapter reading under the header “Participants in the Supply Chain.” Provide evidence to support your categorization. Indicating a function without providing supporting discussion will result in a lower grade. Identify the company’s main focus, for example, Coca-Cola is a manufacturer first and foremost. They also distribute and have some retail stores, but their identity is as a manufacturer. (Maximum value earned = 2 points).
• Supply Chain Location – Define your company’s customers and discuss your company’s suppliers. Your discussion should include the locations of the customer and suppliers (e.g., cities, states, or countries). Include a visual process map of the company’s place in the supply chain (See example below). If there are many suppliers and customers, list a minimum of four (4) for each (Maximum value earned = 2 points)

7-11 Supply Chain Map

• Identify Critical Suppliers and/or Customers- All customers and suppliers are not created equal. Identify a total of 2 critical suppliers and/or customers to your company that your company values. For example, automotive companies would consider chip suppliers to be critical to their success and hard to replace, while they might easily replace a supplier for paint (Maximum value earned = 2 points).

• Company Core Competencies – Define and discuss your company’s core competencies. In other words, what aspects of your company provide a competitive advantage. You can find some guiding information in Module #1 in D2L. (Maximum value earned = 2 points)

• References – List all of the resources you used in this assignment in any standard citation format (i.e., APA, MLA, etc.). At a minimum, you must cite the referenced reading above.

3. Provide a list of references at the end of your document. At the very least, you must cite the referenced reading.
4. There are no minimum or maximum length requirements for this assignment. As graduate students, you can determine how much material is sufficient to fulfill the assignment’s requirements. Your grade is directly dependent on how well you address each item above.