WEEK $15$ CASE STUDY

SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION

In $2000,$ a fire at the Philips microchip plant affected phone manufacturers Nokia And Ericsson. The companies reacted in different ways, and ultimately, Ericsson did not do well, quitting the mobile phone business and allowing Nokia to win over the European market. While Ericsson had tied up all of its key components in a single source and planned to wait out the problem with the fire, Nokia worked to snatch up spare chips from other plants and suppliers, as well as re$-$engineered some of their phones to adapt to different chips from new suppliers. It's not hard to imagine what happened after that. Nokia kept trucking along, while Ericsson suffered from months of lost production and sales, allowing the market to be dominated by Nokia. This incident and fallout is a classic lesson in supply chain risk management.

What are the ethical issues in this case?

What are some arguments for and against this situation?

What do you think most managers should do$?$ What would you do$?$