Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas:

The CEO asked you to have lunch with him and explain exactly how you, in your role, could help the firm achieve a competitive advantage through improved supply chain management. He asked you to discuss the following specific points with him:

• What supply chain management refers to and how it might differ between service type businesses and product type businesses, and between retail and manufacturing type businesses.
• How you would assess whether a firm has an effective versus ineffective supply chain?

Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas:

The CEO has done quite a bit of reading in some of the major quality improvement programs that are available to both the company and to its vendor base. He asked you to describe how a company would go about picking one that would work best for it. He specifically asked the following questions:

• What criteria should be used?
• How would you gather information about each kind of program?
• How you would monitor whether the implementation was a success?
• Why do you think there have been a number of these major quality improvement programs over time; in other words, why hasn’t one been accepted as the ideal one?