4. Dell assembles nearly 80000 computers in 24 hours. Eleven years ago Dell carried 20 to 25 days of inventory in a network of warehouses. Today Dell does not have a single warehouse and carries only two hours of inventory in its factories and a maximum of just 72 hours across its entire operation. In 2010 a 10-day labor lockout shut down 29 West Coast ports extending from LA to Seattle, idling 10,00 union dockworkers and blocking hundreds of cargo ships from unloading raw materials and finished goods. The port closing paralyzed global supply chains and ultimately cost U.S. consumers and businesses billions of dollars. Analysts expected Dell, with its just in time manufacturing model, would be especially hard hit when parts failed to reach its factories in the US. Without warehouses filled with motherboards and hard drives the world's largest pc maker would simply find itself with nothing to sell within a matter of days. Fortunately, the same culture of speed and flexibility that seems to put Dell at the mercy of disruptions also helps it deal with them. Dell was in constant, round-the clock communication with its parts makers in Taiwan, china and Malaysia and its US based shipping partners. The "tiger team" of 10 logistics specialists in California and other ports went into high gear as the closings were all but certain. Dell chartered 18 airplanes from ups Northwest Airlines and China Airlines and ensured that its parts were always at the Shanghai and Taipei airports in time for its returning charters to land, reload, refuel and take off. Meanwhile Dell had people on the ground in every major harbor, in Asia the freight specialists saw to it that Dell's parts were the last to be loaded onto each cargo ship so they would be unloaded first when the ships hit the west coast. Dell that had close to zero inventory of computers, had pc components in hundreds of containers on 50 ships, but knew the exact moment when each component cycled through the harbor and it was among the first to unload its parts and speed them to its factories in Austin, Texas and Nashville Tennessee. In the end Dell did the impossible it survived a 10-day supply chain blackout with roughly 72 hours of inventory without delaying a single customer order. 30% What can you say about the four drivers of Dell's SCM? Type your answer here: Explain how Dell can use CRM to improve its business operations. Type your answer here.