Developing supply chain methodologies for small to medium sized enterprises

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Sourcing and Manufacturing in the Market Region

It has been a common practice to transfer making goods to faraway low-labor-cost countries. For many managers, this seemed to make commercial sense. Sourcing in remote corners of the world takes advantage of reduced labor hour cost. This can be the most significant direct cost. This chapter focuses on the emerging trend to bring manufacturing back, via reshoring within the nation state or near(er) shoring where production is closer by taking advantage of lower cost neighboring locations. Financial analysis presented is based on differential wage rate and pipeline liability. The financial case analysis indicates overall profit that may be reduced due to labor cost; however, risk-free profit can be significantly higher. Four supply chain configurations can be determined using a simple two-by-two matrix: long and short distances between supplier and plant, and between plant and market/customer. Typically, longer distances increase the end-to-end time that is taken and increase inventory. Activity-based cost models (ABCDM) and cases originally focused on internal plant operations now are applied along the supply chain. Long inbound supply and long outbound distribution increase pipeline liability risks and typically increase the inventory due to less frequent and larger volume consignments

Leibniz, Acosmism, and Incompossibility

Leibniz claims that God acts in the best possible way, and that this includes creating exactly one world. But worlds are aggregates, and aggregates have a low degree of reality or metaphysical perfection, perhaps none at all. This is Leibniz’s tendency toward acosmism, or the view that there this no such thing as creation-as-a-whole. Many interpreters reconcile Leibniz’s acosmist tendency with the high value of worlds by proposing that God sums the value of each substance created, so that the best world is just the world with the most substances. I call this way of determining the value of a world the Additive Theory of Value (ATV), and argue that it leads to the current and insoluble form of the problem of incompossibility. To avoid the problem, I read “possible worlds” in “God chooses the best of all possible worlds” as referring to God’s ideas of worlds. These ideas, though built up from essences, are themselves unities and so well suited to be the value bearers that Leibniz’s theodicy requires. They have their own value, thanks to their unity, and that unity is not preserved when more essences are added