Major Facts
Tea and More (TAM) is a purveyor of fine teas and assorted food specialists owned and managed by Jack Reynolds (Doyle & Bell, 2009) . The company, headquartered in Los Angeles, is run solely on the expertise and management of Jack Reynolds who is the sole decision maker and advisor to the company. The company exhibits a complicated supply chain in which it deals with various suppliers across the world selling their merchandise in bulk biannually to the single production facility located in Cleveland, Ohio (Doyle & Bell, 2009) . The company additionally has a complicated customer service in which it has employed three full-time sales representatives with a handful of contract sales representatives who are charged with the mandate of maintaining regular physical contact with the clients across the regions TAM covers. These clients are expected to maintain the traditional 1-month payment maturity system to have their products shipped from inventory (Doyle & Bell, 2009) . This takes place after the exchange of regular mail invoices between the clients and the company.
Major Problems
From the above observation, it is apparent that the company faces from many challenges, though this section will narrow down these challenges to supply chain problems. The company suffers from a complicated supply chain supply that makes it difficult for information to be shared on time between the three key sectors in the chain (Doyle & Bell, 2009) . These sectors are the production facility in Cleveland, the operations headquarters in Los Angeles, and the clients through the sales representatives. The supply chain experiences a technical hitch in the relay of communication between these three sectors.
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Possible Solutions
The first solution that TAM should implement will be the reduction of suppliers in the chain (Silvestre, 2015) . By reducing the numbers of suppliers, it becomes easier to follow up on orders and inventories once they are made and dispatched.
The other solution the company could adopt is a regular small quantity ordering of merchandise from the suppliers (Silvestre, 2015) . By ordering the supplies in bulk biannually, it becomes challenging for the company to follow up on the logistics of the shipping process, as well as the storage of the suppliers.
The production facility should be moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles, or some other location nearer to the operations headquarters (Silvestre, 2015) . This will ease the communication hitch being experienced between the two sites of operations that reflects into branding, advertisement, and other functions of the headquarters that rely on the facility's production.
The other solution could be the establishment of branches in each region to facilitate the interactions between the clients and the company representatives (Silvestre, 2015) . This will save on the time and cost contract sales rep incur to connect with the customers from the limited regional branches.
The above solutions could as well be implemented alongside each other to ensure maximum productivity and active engagement with the clientele. For instance, by moving the production facility to the headquarters and establishing kore regional branches, TAM will be better placed to address the issue of a technical hitch. The disadvantage of such a change, however, will be the cost incurred to set up and stock the branches, as well as the expansion cost for the headquarters to accommodate the production facility.
Choice and Rationale
Considering the costs and benefits of each possible solution, I believe the best solution for TAM to address the supply chain challenges will be the incorporation of all of the four resolutions, systematically through a program change phase (Silvestre, 2015) . In as much as the move may be expensive to implement, it offers a better solution to all the challenges experienced by the company permanently. Once the phases are complete, all the supply chain problems will be solved, as compared to only implementing one or two solutions which at the end shall only have addressed one or two of these challenges.
Implementation
The changes should be implemented with a guide of change management phase plan. In this scenario, the changes should be applied in steps. The first phase should be the reduction of suppliers to save on the time and cost of moving inventories. Once the suppliers are cut off, the supplies should be cut off next. The company should cut down the quantity of supplies ordered to ensure it does not suffer from storage complications. This will make it easy for the third phase which is the moving of the production facility nearer the operations headquarters.
Appendix: Study Questions
To address the issue of poor customer service by the contract sales staff, it is essential that the company puts up more regional branches to encourage direct interactions with the clients.
To retain the company's clientele, it is essential that TAM reduces the cost of inventory. This will, in turn, reduce the cost of production hence lower the cost of its products while at the same time retaining its good quality.
To minimize the inventory problems, TAM should consider getting their supplies locally rather than halfway across the world. This will not only reduce the time and cost for shipping, but it will minimize on stock outages since the supplies will be readily available in the country.
To reduce the collection days, TAM should adopt technological means of processing orders from the clients, such as the use of fax and emails to exchange invoices. This will reduce the number of days taken to clear orders for collection.
To compete in the evolving tea market, it is essential that TAM experiments with new tea varieties to attract an even more extensive clientele. Such a decision, however, should be taken based on the feedback of the market. TAM, therefore, should first conduct market research to determine what tea is on demand.
Another avenue that can help the company achieve financial advantage is through encouraging investors to have a voting right. Such a privilege will attract investors to the company, leading to the creation of a more significant financial resources pool for TAM.
References
Doyle, B., & Bell, A. H. (2009). Reading the Tea Leaves at Tea and More: Resolving Complex Supply Chain Issues. Operations and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal , 165-171.
Silvestre, B. S. (2015). Sustainable supply chain management in emerging economies: Environmental turbulence, institutional voids and sustainability trajectories. International Journal of Production Economics , 167 , 156-169.
