Alcoa is a manufacturer of aluminum products. It has three mines around the world, smelters, storage facilities, and manufacturing plants to produce different types of aluminum products sold to distributors and other manufacturing companies. It employs about 2,500 people in fourteen countries, has twelve mainframe computing systems, several server farms, and thousands of desktop computer systems in addition to its manufacturing systems. It reduced inventories by a quarter of a billion dollars in one year, while increasing sales by just under $1 billion. Alcoa did all of this because they implemented new e-business systems for the transmission of documents and funds, using new standards that were common to all locations.

Managing in real time making decisions now, on the basis of accurate, live information delivered via the Internet and corporate intranets and extranets; producing to actual orders rather than to forecast or budget these are some of the capabilities of the new systems.

1. Describe the three segments of the supply chain. For each segment, provide an example of how it applies to Alcoa. (4 marks)

1. Describe the three types of flows in the supply chain. For each type of flow, provide an example for Alcoa. (4 marks)

1. Describe two technologies that Alcoa may have leveraged to improve information flow between its suppliers and distributors. (2 marks)