Huluwa Technology Co. Ltd. (Huluwa) was a small manufacturer of children’s smart watches in China. The company’s smart watches could be monitored by parents in real time through an application installed on their phones. The product design, application development, raw material procurement, and cloud service were all operated by Huluwa, while production was outsourced to a factory. Huluwa mainly relied on its offline channels to sell products. In April 2016, looking back at the first-quarter data for the year, the company’s operations director noted that Huluwa had sold and delivered 150,000 units to its distributors while it had produced 200,000 units. Puzzled by that gap, he was also worried about the production capacity stretch imposed on the contract manufacturer. How could the company manage continuing growth for the product?
葫芦娃科技有限公司：儿童智能手表 Huluwa Technology Co., Ltd.: The Children’s Smart Watch (Simplified Chinese version)
Ying Rong, Stephan Vachon, Xiaojing Feng
Product #:W31146
Supplier:Ivey
Discipline:Operations Management
Setting:China, 2016
Industries:
Your Price:$10.54
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Learning Objectives
- 确认供应链中导致牛鞭效应的因素；
- 了解快速增长对销售人员和分销商行为的影响，以及
- 在供应链中议价能力有限的情况下，识别并描述可能的供应链策略范围。
This case can be used in undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on supply chain management or operations management. It can also be integrated into a management of technology course that has a new product management component. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to:
- identify the elements that contribute to a bullwhip effect in a supply chain;
- examine the impact of rapid growth on the behaviour of salespeople and distributors; and
- identify and describe the range of possible supply chain tactics in the context of limited bargaining power in a supply chain.