Read the case study and answer the questions given at the end. (20 Marks)

If you enjoy cycling, you may very well be using a Cannondale bicycle. Cannondale, headquartered in Bethel, Connecticut, is the world-leading manufacturer of high-end bicycles, apparel, footwear, and accessories, with dealers and distributors in more than 66 countries. Cannondales supply and distribution chains span the globe, and the company must coordinate manufacturing, assembly, and sales/distribution sites in many different countries. Cannondale produces more than 100 different bicycle models each year; 60 percent of these are newly introduced to meet ever-changing customer preferences. Cannondale offers both make-to-stock and make-to-order models. A typical bicycle requires a 150-day lead time and a four-week manufacturing window, and some models have bills of materials with over 150 parts. (A bill of materials specifies the raw materials, assemblies, components, parts, and quantities of each needed to manufacture a final product.)

Cannondale must manage more than 1 million of these bills of materials and more than 200,000 individual parts. Some of these parts come from specialty vendors with even longer lead times and limited production capacity.

Obviously, managing parts availability in a constantly changing product line impacted by volatile customer demand requires a great deal of manufacturing flexibility. Until recently, that flexibility was missing. Cannondale had an antiquated legacy material requirement planning system for planning production, controlling inventory, and managing manufacturing processes that could only produce reports on a weekly basis. By Tuesday afternoon, Mondays reports were already out of date. The company was forced to substitute parts in order to meet demand, and sometimes it lost sales. Cannondale needed a solution that could track the flow of parts more accurately, support its need for flexibility, and work with its existing business systems, all within a restricted budget.

Cannondale selected the Kinaxis Rapid Response on-demand software service as a solution. Rapid Response furnishes accurate and detailed supply chain information via an easy-to-use spreadsheet interface, using data supplied automatically from Cannondales existing manufacturing systems. Data from operations at multiple sites are assembled in a single place for analysis and decision making. Supply chain participants from different locations are able to model manufacturing and inventory data in what-if scenarios to see the impact of alternative actions across the entire supply chain. Old forecasts can be compared to new ones, and the system can evaluate the constraints of a new plan, Cannondale buyers, planners, master schedulers, sources, product managers, customer service, and finance personnel, use Rapid Response for sales reporting, forecasting, monitoring daily inventory availability, and feeding production schedule information to Cannondales manufacturing and order processing systems. Users are able to see up-to-date information for all sites. Management uses the system daily to examine areas where there are backlogs. The improved supply chain information from Rapid Response enables Cannondale to respond to customer orders much more rapidly with lower levels of inventory and safety stock. Cycle times and lead times for producing products have also been reduced. The companys dates for promising deliveries are more reliable and accurate.

Answer following Questions.

Supply chain management is less about managing the physical movement of goods and more about managing information. Discuss the implications of this statement from the above case.