Strategic analysis of IKEA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Strategic analysis of IKEA - Essay Example plistic style matches also the no-frills product lines and customer service ethos and chimes with the company’s origins as a small Swedish family business which started in 1958. In reality, however, the company has a sophisticated approach to its business, and this is built on a suite of interlocking strategies. This paper will consider five of these in turn: Alliances/Agreements, Human Resource Factors, Knowledge Management and Competencies, Cultural and Strategic Fitness, and finally Environment/Sensitivity issues and analyse the appropriateness and effectiveness of each. IKEA’s phenomenal success in expanding from Europe to America and Asia could not have happened without a network of well-chosen alliances and long term business relationships with suppliers, manufacturers and logistics operators. Planning of supply and demand across the whole operation is done centrally with the aid of computerized APS (advanced planning systems) and this requires advance agreements on volumes and capacities for both IKEA and the different suppliers. (Jonsson et al, 2008, p. 99). The aim of this approach is to make optimal use of resources throughout the whole chain and to minimize stock levels. Where possible, and when quality control processes are in place at the required level, suppliers are tied into a system of direct delivery to the point of sale. Johnsson et al. identify four main â€Å"enablers† for this planning process â€Å"planning organisation, data quality, software support and project and change management† (Jonsson et al, 2008, p . 100). The last of these entails significant time and resources spent by IKEA managers out in the field: â€Å"IKEA has over time struggled with achieving consistent result from its implementation efforts†¦ A Four-Step model has been defined clearly recognizing the need to create awareness in the first step, create interest in what is coming in the second step, making users try out the solution in the third step and finally adopt

Paleontogly Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Paleontogly - Research Paper Example The contemporary representation of this sexual dimorphism is that it is a â€Å"single, unidimensional phenomenon that is displayed to greater (e.g. gorillas, orangutans) or lesser (e.g. humans) degrees in the different primate species† (Oxnard, 1987, 2). Furthermore, it is commonly believed to be mainly related to variations in general size of the body between sexes (Levinton, 2001). The implication for evolutionary theory is, that human sexual dimorphism in the past must have been significantly greater than it is in the present day, possibly more like that in the living primates (Oxnard, 1987). Understanding the human ancestry is regarded as one of the challenges in exploring human evolution. Nonetheless, several fossil hunters appear to believe that this implies that their mission is to find the pieces of the exact human antecedent in the field (Elewa, 2004). Similarly, several laboratory examiners appear to believe that this implies that their mission is proving that a certain fossil relic is that ancestor (Serafini, 1993). Exploring human evolution, even in the mind of the public, appears to be this issue of moving from ‘missing’ to ‘found’ links (Oxnard, 1987, 2). The challenge appears to be the unearthing of ancestors. But what is the certainty of this undertaking? Even from a population as large and concentrated as that of any major metropolitan area, and over as many as hundreds of generations, the statistical changes of any particular individual ever becoming fossilized and found by a paleontologist millions of years later must be almost infinitesimal. How much less must be the chances of finding representatives of populations of perhaps only a few thousand, scattered over an area of the world as large as Africa or Asia, during periods of time measured in hundreds of thousands, even millions of years (Oxnard, 1987, 3). Once humans are thousand years ahead of a death, possibly tens of thousands of