1,721,114 research outputs found
Sourcing in China: the international purchasing office solution
No full textChina possesses one of the most dynamic economies in the world. Many companies, enticed by the opportunities offered (not only cost-related ones) have decided to source from this market. In China’s social, cultural,
and legal context, so different from Western ones, they are likely to encounter numerous obstacles when creating and managing a supply flow from China. Creating an International Purchasing Office (IPO) is becoming one of the solutions most frequently adopted by Western
companies to manage international sourcing activities. Despite the increasing importance of this solution, there are still few studies published on this topic. The present study attempts to fill the gap in scientific literature, defining the solutions for the creation and management of an International Purchasing Office (IPO) in China.
Moreover, the study attempts to describe the reasons for the creation of an IPO in China, the main activities that can be delegated to it, and adoptable organizational solutions
Approvvigionamenti in India. Opportunità e strategie nel paese del Service Offshoring
No full textL’India ha ritrovato sulla scena mondiale un ruolo da protagonista. I suoi punti di forza – dalla disponibilità e qualità delle risorse umane alla favorevole posizione geopolitica – la rendono un bacino di approvvigionamento
e un mercato di sbocco tra i più interessanti. Una strategia compiutamente globale non può allora ignorarla.
L’approvvigionamento internazionale – in particolare da un subcontinente come questo caratterizzato da un composito mosaico culturale e da un’articolata geografia
industriale – richiede un’attenta analisi dei fattori di contesto e una puntuale pianificazione delle attività.
Sulla base di alcune esperienze aziendali, il libro evidenzia opportunità, rischi e problematiche del sourcing dall’India, con un occhio di riguardo ai servizi, punto di forza ormai riconosciuto di questo bacino. Ricostruisce le fasi di sviluppo di un canale di approvvigionamento individuandone i passaggi chiave, dalla definizione degli obiettivi fino alla stesura del contratto. Il testo sviluppa anche una serie di aspetti correlati: situazione macro-economica, normativa in materia di investimenti diretti esteri, infrastrutture.
Propone infine nella sezione dedicata ai casi aziendali una serie di esperienze concrete di sourcing dell’India
Sourcing in China. Strategies, methods and experiences
No full textVarious works have been published in the last years focused on Chinese economic and political geography, as well as on themes connected to Chinese (Asian) business (legislation, negotiating style, etc.) contexts. However the literature lacks contributions that address the managerial aspects involved in the development of a production and supply base in China and the corresponding supply chain management issue. This development is a complex task in a social, cultural and normative context so distant from our own. A number of obstacles need to be overcome: the language, the cultural and geographic distance, the coordination of an international logistic net, the transfer of technological capabilities and managerial praxes, and the quality monitoring at source.
This book summarised the main findings of the EU project "International Sourcing Strategies for China" focused on the above mentioned aspects. This project was coordinated by the authors in collaboration with partners belonging to the "Otto-von-Guericke" University of Magdeburg (Germany), the Beijing National Centre for Science and Technology Evaluation (NCSTE) (the main Chinese ministerial agency specialised in the assessment of scientific and technological programs), and finally INNOVA, a leading Italian company for technological transfer and strategic advising. Aware of the growing importance of the Chinese market, the European Union has activated the program "Asia Information Technologies & Communication", whose aim is to promote the identification of organizational solutions and ICT instruments for the effective management of the supply chains that join Europe and China.
A sample of European enterprises was analysed, selected according to two criteria. These enterprises belong to industries where the EU-China interchange is most relevant. In addition, there units are in some way exemplary in their ability to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the international chessboards, where the careful and systematic resort to the sourcing opportunities offered by emerging countries is at times responsible for major buying advantages, extraordinarily fast increase rates, and sometimes even for a radical modification of the business.
In greater detail, the structure of the book is the following.
Chapter 1 reviews the papers published on international sourcing (IS). Determinants and problems, forms, development paths, and management practices of IS are illustrated following an extensive analysis of the literature.
Chapter 2 briefly describes the main events that have characterized the recent history of China. Then it sketches a geo-economic picture of the country. The most important economic indicators are listed, that reveal how this country is assuming a more and more important role inside the international trading community.
Chapter 3 points out objectives and methodology of the project "International Sourcing Strategies for China" from which this book draws its origin. After a short account of the samples, motives, advantages and obstacles underlying the choice of China as a sourcing base are described.
Chapter 4 shows a taxonomy of the sourcing typologies of the sample. Each typology is described in terms of industry, purchasing code, organisational requirements, key competences, and characteristics of the relationship with the Chinese interlocutors.
Chapter 5 indicates some methodologies that could be useful when choosing and planning the establishment of a sourcing channel in the Chinese market. A normative model is proposed that suggests the best suited typology depending on the key context variables (company size and purchasing volumes, complexity of the Chinese industrial context, and the complexity of the purchase code). Then the sequence of steps and activities involved in the development of a sourcing channel and an International Purchasing Office are listed.
Chapter 6 details some of the most critical aspects of IS in China: the role of intermediaries, organizational decentralization, Chinese relational logic and negotiation style, the technology and know how transfer.
Chapter 7 summarises modalities and legislative constrains that discipline foreign investments in China. Main forms and historical course of foreign investments, fiscal facilities and instruments for the defence of the intellectual property are briefly depicted.
Chapter 8 gives a description of transport infrastructures in China. The evolution of the transport systems and the current situation of rail, air, road and naval infrastructures are illustrated
International purchasing offices in China
No full textCreating an international purchasing office (IPO) is one of the most frequently adopted solutions by companies to manage their international sourcing activities. Despite the increasing importance of this solution for international supply management, the literature still offers limited studies on it.
This research, which forms part of an EU project entitled ‘International sourcing Strategies for China’, tries to fill this gap. Starting from an analysis and systematisation of the existing literature, the study defines the main aspects characterising the creation and management of
IPOs in China, which is actually one of the nations with the highest inflow of foreign direct investments and one of the most important sourcing basins in the world. In particular, taking into consideration the specificities of the Chinese normative/social/political context, the research tries to describe how to establish and manage an IPO in China and the main functions assigned to it
Sourcing in China: a typology
No full textChina is one of the most attractive sourcing basins thanks to the low cost of manpower, the rapid increase in the quality and quantity of its products, the availability of major logistic platforms, and the possibility of justifying a commercial presence in the market that is potentially the biggest of the world. Taking into consideration the importance of the phenomenon, this study has tried to analyse-through case study research-the sourcing types adopted by a sample composed of 10 companies with their headquarters in Italy and at least 5 years experience in the management of sourcing activities in China. The data gathered highlight that the sourcing activity in China can differ in some structural characteristics; certain critical. factors of the sourcing types described in this study are considered. Moreover, we try to identify the context variables that can indicate the most suitable sourcing type. As far as this latter aspect is concerned, the research group has developed some hypotheses that will be tested in subsequent investigations
The internationalization of local manufacturing systems: evidence from the Italian chair district
No full textThe present study focuses on one of the most important Italian local manufacturing systems: the chair district. Over 1200 companies operate here producing more than 44 million chairs a year, which is 80% of the entire Italian production. This district is going though a phase of transformation induced by the opportunities and threats typical of the era of the global economy. These transformations involve the sourcing, manufacturing and selling activities. On the basis of empirical research, the study analyses the evolution of the chair district and the strategic choices made by the producers: reconfiguration of the production and logistical networks, decentralization of production tasks, internalization and externalization of the phases, and diversification of supply and distribution channels
That branch of the Lake of Como...: Developing a New Resource for the Analysis of I Promessi Sposi and its Historical Translations
No full textThis paper presents a directional parallel corpus of the Ventisettana, that is the version of I Promessi Sposi published by Manzoni in 1827, aligned at sentence level with the anonymous English translation published in London in 1834 by Richard Bentley. After describing the procedure followed for creating the resource and analyzing the results of the manual alignment, the corpus is used as a gold standard to evaluate Bertalign automatic aligner. This new linguistic resource can benefit the research community, in particular in the fields of the history of literature and translation studies, and be useful for developing new automatic tools specific for handling the peculiarities of historical literary texts
- …
