Sourcing Strategy at General Mills

Organisations around the world are increasingly operating in very dynamic business environments. Among the areas that are being monitored is the way raw materials for production are procured and how the finished products reach the market and eventually the consumer. This paper will provide a review of published documents on strategic procurement in organizations by providing a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of their findings. The paper will present the impacts of the findings of the reviewed articles on the activities of an organisation that operates in a business to customer industry. And also a supermarket will be used in this case.

Loblaw Companies is one of the largest food retailers in Canada, owning well maintained brands such as NoFrills, Real Canadian Superstore, and Shoppers Drug Mart. With its focus of fresh produce, real Canadian pork, and low prices on other instore food products, Loblaw’s had created well-established branding for themselves in the local communities. However, in the past few years, Loblaw’s Companies have faced an ever-growing competitive market, with other retail competitors such as Walmart, Costco, and Drugstores expanding in the food retail industry. It is sourced

2 Causes and Analysis of Rising Cocoa Beans Prices Prices for cocoa mainly respond to supply and demand factors. Ideally, one would think

“Media coverage and the threat of regulatory action mobilized the international cocoa industry to collaborate with other stakeholders to eliminate the worst forms of child labor from cocoa production” (Schrage, E. J , & Ewing, A. P. 2005). The harsh conditions of the farms has been discussed for many years. Some of the owners of the farms are rumored to be engaging

The advantages I see from my company using domestic sourcing is we get shipments fast. When you have a patient with a broken frame, you want that frame as fast as possible. Many times if the lab has the frame the will have it the next day. Domestic sourcing is cheaper. Never really have a delay for the sourcing we use. Also, there are so many domestic sources to chose from, if I do not like one source I can easily switch to another. Some disadvantages I see from the company I use for domestic sourcing is boxes are smashed. Some patients have received broken glasses. We have received smashed boxes and broken frames. Quality of handle is not that great. It also seems customer service is lacking. I called one source and asked them about shipping

Hire Outsourcing Company: Hiring an outsourcing company or source is always an option for any company to come and assist with helping the company grow and implementing strategic plans to help Whole Food Market grow. Having an outsourcing agent to help on your Marketing strategy can be important, knowing the fact that, if you are up to date with the growing competitions with the other competitors, hiring an outsourcing company is are proficient at that could add a value to the Whole Food Market. When you don’t hire an outsourcing company to come in and assist in adding value to your company, you begin to lose your brand and your competitive edge, because of the failure to know when your competitors begin to out compete your company. When you don’t hire an outsourcing company, our sales might start to decline, and the cost our company could take might even lead to our company downgrading on

Trader Joe's is a neighborhood grocery store with amazing food and drink from around the world and here at home. Established in 1967, the first Trader Joe's opened its doors in Pasadena, California, which is still there today. Trader Joe’s success led to expansion into a retail chain that has become known as oases of value that replaced humdrum sundries with exotic, one-of-a-kind foods priced persuasively below those of any reasonable competitor.

We will continue to post job notifications to various websites such as workopolis.com, and jobzilla.com., however,. our company will take a more active approach to the hiring process by direct sourcing. We will pay a premium amount to hiring websites which will allow us to view resumes by persons who are not actively seeking work or who may have not applied for a job within the company, but are qualified for the position. This will also allow us to have control over which candidates are viewed and considered.

General Mills (GSI) is the sixth largest food company in the world. The company currently operates in more than 100 foreign countries and employs over 35,000 people. . GSI manufactures and markets branded consumer foods worldwide and supplies branded and unbranded food products to the foodservice and commercial baking industries. The company manufactures cereals, yogurt, ready-to-serve soup, dry dinners, frozen vegetables, refrigerated and frozen dough products, dessert and baking mixes, frozen pizza, flour, fruit and snacks; and organic products, including soup, granola bars, and cereals; and ice cream and frozen desserts, and high fiber snacks. Its best

General Mills is a multinational enterprise in the food industry. To say the least General Mills is a food giant! They started off in 1880 with their first product, which was Gold Medal flour; Gold medal remains the number 1 selling branded flour in the United States today. They have many other lines of products ranging from Pillsbury refrigerated dough, Giant frozen vegetables, to Cheerios cereal. General Mills markets in more than 100 countries on six continents.

Trader Joe can be seen as a trading consortium that has a great charm and quirky cool in the market, something that has a great bearing on the strategic measures adopted by the company. The strategy involved by the company is purely differentiation into the market with vast measures to introduce the product and have it take root within its peripheries of management and capabilities. Like any other business, Trader Joe invests in leadership and differentiation that leads to growth (Gunn and Wona 12). The company is focused in an integrated way, seeking to have a full control of the market, increase its satisfaction to the present and potential customers, and have what it takes to enter into a business stability in the future market. Trader Joe follows this differentiation strategy as it gives it insights, mechanism of control, and management avenues that cope with the pressures in the market. It enables the company to observe and absorb opportunities and keep a stable movement into an expanded body in its plans (Ager and Roberto 3).

General Mills is providing farm automation, equipment and training to increase cocoa yields as well as to improve the education and health in the area. Part of this program includes providing farmers with pesticides in order to reduce the amount of crops that are lost to waste (Global, 42). One way that General Mills can improve this initiative is to make sure they are providing the farmers with organic pesticides, which would reduce the impact of the pesticides on the environment.

One of our company’s biggest advantages is its geographical position. The Netherlands have the largest cocoa port in the world. Additionally, it is the number one grinder, which is the first step in the processing of cacao beans, accounting for 450,000 tons of cocoa per year of a total worldwide 700,000 tons per year that are imported into the EU. As is visible in the following chart, The Netherlands are the leading cocoa grinders in the world well ahead of France who takes up second place with 10%. The top buyers in the EU market are Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Switzerland (Cacao in the Netherlands,

It is true that growing cocoa helps Côte d'Ivoire in some ways, such as benefiting the country’s economy. The amount of chocolate being consumed all over the world is tremendously high. Document A shows that each year, the average person in the United States eats approximately 95 chocolate bars per year and the average person in Switzerland eats around 19.8 pounds of chocolate per year. Because countries are eating so much chocolate, Côte d'Ivoire is making more money from the chocolate industry. Compared to the United States total GDP in 2014, Côte d'Ivoire may not seem as wealthy, but keep

The natural environment involves Cocoa beans that are needed by Whittaker’s to produce their chocolate products. Over the next few years, the world is expected to face a chocolate ‘drought’, leading to soaring prices of cocoa beans due to insufficient consumable cocoa to chocolate manufacturers. (Western farm press, 2011)