SG2039 International Logistics

January 2014 Assignment 2

Summary
This is individual work.
Weighting
Submission

: 80%
: To be determined

Please note: your submission date is in your revision week. You are advised to submit your
work some time after the seminar on the previous Friday to ensure that you do not disturb
your revision period.
The Learning Outcomes evidenced by this assignment: 1 - 12.

Introduction
The Hock Cheong Transport Company began as a local haulage company in 1945. Over the
years it has grown into the Hock Cheong Group of Companies (www.hockcheong.com.sg)
specialising in door-to-door deliveries, multimode freight services, warehousing, distribution,
customs documentation and port clearance, freight forwarding, and other related services.
Currently the Group has ventured into value-added services for manufacturers and importers
that include national freight consolidation, small parcels delivery, re-labelling, insertion of
warranty cards and instruction manuals, shrink-wrap and promotional packaging, customer
returns management, and document management services.
The Group maintains its own network of branches throughout East and West Malaysia,
Singapore, and Brunei. However, during the late 1990s the Group expanded its business to
provide warehousing, distribution, and freight forwarding services in the ASEAN region
through its strategic partners.
Increasingly, the Group is seeking to expand its services beyond South East Asia and become
a truly global company with total supply chain management for its clients. The Group is
already providing its logistics services in the South East Asian region to customers such as
Pearson Education Malaysia, McGraw Hill, Jardine One Solution, and Amoy Canning.

Your Submission
You are to submit a report of 2500 words that addresses the following:

SM2039 International Logistics Coursework

Critically examine the Groups operations and discuss how they can develop total supply
chain solutions for customers in the local industry and Asian region. Identify and
discuss processes and technologies that could assist in realising their potential.
Notes
When analysing the various services and activities of the Group, you should:
Revisit your work for Assignment 1 and identify the range of challenges that could apply
to the Group when serving its customers and how could they be managed.
Consider the range of services that the company provides and discuss what else they
could do on an international scale to support an integrated supply chain for its customers.
Discuss processes and technologies that could be adopted to realize higher efficiency
and minimize cost in the operations.
Your work will not be marked if it is not submitted to Turnitin. You are recommended to
submit it at least 1 week prior to submission in the Business School in order to give
yourself time to react to the report. You should re-submit it after any final revisions are
made to your work
The general criteria for assessment are as follows:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)

Relevance of materials used

Logical Sequence Development
Evidence of background reading
Critical evaluation of issues/results
Use of referencing system and bibliography
Overall presentation
TOTAL

30%
5%
30%
20%
10%
5%
100%

Assessment Standards
First
(70% or
above)

Ideas critically analysed

Argument is clear, succinct and well supported.
Evidence of a wide range of reading and some independent
thought.

Upper second
(60-69%)

Critical consideration of relevant ideas.

Arguments are precisely defined and appropriately
referenced.
The work is structurally sound and well written.

Lower second
(50-59%)

Reasonable understanding of the relevant concepts, but

some inconsistencies in application.
Arguments are referenced, but disjointed.
Poor structure, spelling or grammar.

Third
(40-49%)

Generally descriptive work with limited evidence of a

critical consideration of ideas.
Inadequate referencing.
Weaknesses in structure, spelling and grammar.

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SM2039 International Logistics Coursework

Fail
(below 40%)

Uncritical
Poorly referenced
Argument indicates little use of relevant literature.
Chaotic structure and generally badly written

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SM2039 International Logistics Coursework

Player Manual for Beer Game

Website
http://davinci.tamu.edu/beergame/v2/

Introduction
The objective of the game is to satisfy the demand of the customer, while keeping the cost
low. There is a cost for holding inventory and a cost for not satisfying demand (backorder).
The demand for the product remains until it is satisfied i.e. backorder persists until it is
fulfilled.

Game play
Each player would be given an information card as shown below,

The information card contains details regarding the group (e.g. 465-Spring06), game (e.g. 1),
position (e.g. Retailer) and password. Using this information a player could start/login into
his game.
When a player clicks on the link to play the game, he would see the entire list of groups
registered to play this game. The player would be directed to click on his group (e.g. 465Spring06), which would direct him to the list of games. Each player would be assigned to a
position in a game. When the player clicks on the game button, he would see a snapshot of
the supply chain as shown below,

This
picture would vary according to the game settings. The traditional supply chain partner
positions include factory, distributor, wholesaler and retailer. Sometimes there might less than
4 supply chain partners in a game. The two types of flows in this supply chain include
product and information. There may be delay in these flows, which could be 1 or 2 weeks or
in some cases no delay. Shipment (product flow) is made downstream and information is
transmitted upstream in this supply chain.
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SM2039 International Logistics Coursework

As soon as a player clicks on his position, he/she would be asked to login using the password
given to them. After validating the login, the player is transferred to their game screen. The
game screen consists of 4 regions, namely order input screen, past information (10 weeks)
about their position, status information of the supply chain partners and plot and settings
screen.

1. Order input screen

This screen provides information regarding the current demand (from downstream partner)
and current incoming shipment (from upstream partner).
For a player:
Total demand = Current demand + Backorder
Available to ship in a week = Incoming shipment + on hand inventory
If Available to ship > Total demand,
Ending inventory balance = Available to ship Total demand
If Available to ship < Total demand,
Backorder (unsatisfied demand) = Total demand Available to ship
All these calculations are done automatically. The player just has to decide how much to
order from his upstream partner. This decision affects the cost of his system, which depends
on the inventory/backorder he carries. He can use the data in the other screens namely, past
information and plots to aid his decision.

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SM2039 International Logistics Coursework

2. Information for the Last ten weeks

This screen displays the information for the last 10 weeks (if available), it includes data
regarding inventory/backorder, incoming shipment, outgoing shipment, order placed and
current cost (cumulative).
3. Status of the other supply chain channel partners
This is a unique feature of this game, which displays the status of the other supply chain
partners for the current week. This part of the screen gets refreshed automatically every 30
seconds. As soon as all the partners complete the order processing for the current week, the
player would see a button appear in this part of the screen. By clicking the button, a player
could proceed to fulfil his order for the next week. This helps in controlling the flows in the
game without the intervention of an external authority.

4. Plots and supply chain settings

Using the buttons in this screen, a player could view the demand, inventory/backorder and
order plots for the entire duration of the game. The supply chain settings for the player is
also displayed in this screen, which includes the holding cost/unit/week, backorder
cost/unit/week, information regarding the upstream and downstream partners along with their
delay (shipping and information) information.
If you have any concerns or questions regarding this game, please contact your Lecturer.

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