Logistics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

Logistics - Essay Example FedEx is an American international courier delivery company. The organization has massive information stored in its computer vaults in its Memphis headquarters (FedEx, 2014). The major challenge for FedEx in the early 2000s was to help their global partners access this information, make business for themselves and in turn business for FedEx. To solve this challenge, FedEx connected its partners through an online portal. Check Point Software Technologies is the firm that provided the needed software that was customized by FedEx’s IT workforce. Tied to the firm’s payment processing system, AutoPay, the portal provides access to various reports including revenues brought in by each partner compared to their budgets (Hemmatfar, Salchi & Bayat, 2010). This is in line with the objective of business intelligence of comparing actual performance to set goals (Gendron, 2013). The portal could also be queried to provide information on delivery performance and help in making decisi ons on best locations for new satellite bureaus. Thus, FedEx is able to track and monitor its processes. It provides real-time management updates to pave way for appropriate adjustment plans. Therefore, business intelligence has been critical for FedEx’s continuous planning. In the same way, business intelligence could be used in the logistics industry in general to make timely and well informed business

Service Oriented Architectures Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Service Oriented Architectures - Essay Example As the research highlights  the increased competition among international manufacturers forces them to reduce their manufacturing costs. These industries are usually stemmed from advanced and high incomes countries of the world. The wage rates in these countries are really high because of high living standards. The labor cost is one of the major costs of manufacturing. Although in a simple operations analysis it would not seem very high. The major cost seems to be of raw materials and parts being used in the manufacturing process. One must understand that these parts are also being manufactured and thus their costs rise as well because of high wage rates. The manufacturing industries have no other reliable method of reducing their manufacturing cost other than outsourcing to countries with lower wage rates.This paper discusses that  the connection of customers to services is a major point of concern for many organizations. This is because a user interface is required which can co nnect consumers with available web based services. Service oriented architecture provides this capability to organizations by connecting consumers of applications to available solutions and services. XML can be used by the consumers to connect with services based on Service oriented architecture. SOA also has the capability of using multiple implementation platforms.  This integrates different applications in the web-environment. Moreover the simplification of different functions in terms of services helps systems developers.