Warner Bros Entertainment Inc is a fully integrated, broad-based entertainment company and a global leader in the creation, production, distribution, licensing, and marketing of all forms of entertainment and their related businesses. A Time Warner company, the studio is home to one of the most successful collections of brands in the world and stands at the forefront of every aspect of the entertainment industry.

In the early 2000s, the five main divisions in Warner Bros were movies, television shows, animation, home video, and interactive entertainment (video games). Dividing such a large organisation along product lines allowed each business sector to develop product, pricing, and promotion policies, and supply chain strategies, independent of one another. But to the distributors and retailers who were Warner Bros direct customers, the view was quite different. Each customer had to deal with five separate billing and logistics processes one for each business division. This caused a wide range of problems, as it did not allow customers to purchase all Warner Bros products (DVDs and reels from different divisions) together for delivery on the same truck. Some customers went several days without receiving an order, only to have several trucks with Warner Bros orders arriving at the receiving dock at the same time on the same day. Different product categories were shipped on different trucks with different invoices. The separate pricing and promotion policies, coupled with non-coordinated management of logistics activities across the five business divisions, resulted in different prices per item and order quantities of less-than-full truckloads.

After 2010, and having listened to customer complaints over the years, Warner Bros launched its streamlined logistics initiative and simplified pricing and promotion structure. But, more importantly, Warner Bros. redesigned the information and physical flows across the business divisions so that customers had to deal with only one Warner Bros billing process and one set of logistics processes. Optical discs, hard drives, satellite links or the internet are the new ways of sharing the products of Warner Bros.

Source: Warner Bros Online

QUESTION:

1. Conduct further research on Warner Bros and identify and evaluate its upstream (first-tier and second-tier) and downstream suppliers. Illustrate and analyse the link between the activities of each element in the supply chain. (15 marks)