Page 155 - DMGT547_INTERNATIONAL_MARKETING

International Marketing

Notes 14. In ........................., the seller takes payment in some product produced in the buying country.
15. Reference prices can be Internal or ..........................

Case Study The Case of Vendor Improvement

he rays of the late afternoon sun filtered in through the sheer glass that was south-
western wall of Indo-Wichita’s boardroom. It cast three long shadows on the
Twhiteboard that stood in the opposite corner, the diagrams on it from the last
meeting only half-obliterated. The presence of just three people made the room seem
larger than it was. Gautam Niyogi, at three inches above 5 feet, was the smallest, but he
had the word CEO written all over him. Rajeev Kshirsagar – at 38, he was 10 years younger
than his boss – was more casual. The third person, Arnab Roychowdhury, was trying hard
to look older than his 30 years, which was exactly the average age of senior consultants at
Beninger Darkman.
Gautam Niyogi: “Thanks for dropping by at such short notice, Arnab. You haven’t met
Rajeev Kshirsagar, have you? He’s my right-hand man. Rajeev, Arnab is the bright young
man whom Sam told me about. Arnab, we want to talk to you about a special vendor
education programme that we have been running for over two years now. All these
months, we thought that it was giving us – and our suppliers – great results. But, over the
past few weeks, we have been getting feedback, some direct, some indirect, which suggests
that we may have been exaggerating its success. In fact, we may actually have been
jeopardising our entire supply chain management process. And that’s where we need
your help.

Arnab Roychowdhury: All right. Could we start at the beginning? What is this special
programme?
Niyogi: Our Vendor Improvement Team conducts it. Not very imaginatively, we call it
the VIT. It is a sort of crash-course we devised to quickly bring our vendors up to global
standards. A 7-member cross-functional team, made up of our manager’s, offers intensive
programmes in manufacturing techniques to our vendors – completely free of cost. It is a
parallel process to our regular vendor management programme. And it is really an
intermittent effort, not a continuous one.
Roychowdhury: So, the VIT isn’t meant to be part of a long-term association with your
vendors?
Niyogi: Actually, the whole objective of the VIT is to conduct a short-term programme –
10 weeks, to be precise – and to leave it to the vendor to continue with it. You could think
of it as a supplement to our official Vendor Development Programme. So, while the
overall goal of our partnership programme with our suppliers is joint product development,
supervisory training and strategic planning, the VIT is focused on the shop floor. You
know, manufacturing techniques and that kind of thing.…
Roychowdhury: Why isn’t it part of your formal vendor development programme?
Rajeev Kshirsagar: May I take that, Gautam? You see, Arnab, we’re doing this not just for
ourselves. Nichita, our Japanese partner, is also using our efforts as a laboratory. If we’re
successful, they’ll ask their companies in other countries to use the same method. If you
ask me why they started with us, it is, probably, because our supplier-base is pretty

Contd...

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