Recommend actions and/or changes to the present-day arrangements with reference to the criteria you discussed in Section 3

a case study Nutract is a relative newcomer to the agricultural machinery market, established in 1983. Despite this, they have managed to establish their product in a market otherwise dominated by companies such as John Deere, CNH Industrial and Kubota. Through subsidy of training centres (for example, donating machinery to agricultural colleges) and a system of scholarships, Nutract ensured that there were a lot of people in farming communities who were familiar with their equipment. This strategy has allowed them to carve out a niche in the marketplace because independent dealerships find it easiest to hire technicians who have been trained on Nutract systems. Nutract describe their current product, NT3050, as a "multipurpose agricultural vehicle platform." It's a powerful, all-wheel drive tractor that can be used with a variety of accessories to perform a wide range of tasks on medium and large farms, including tilling the soil, planting, spraying, transporting bales, and light construction work. Nutract is a global concern, with components manufactured in many different places. Global sourcing has made Nutract vehicles highly competitive, with parts and finished vehicles typically moving by sea. Table 1 shows the main sources, covering over 95% of the total cost of a vehicle. Final assembly takes place in the USA, in Poland and in South Africa. South America and Asia are areas currently showing particularly strong growth, although other regions of the globe are by no means struggling: there is a lot of demand for Nutract's innovative NT3050 vehicle. Table 1: Location of major manufacturing operations in the Nutract supply network ( denotes a wholly-owned Nutract site) Last year was a good one for Nutract, in fact the best in the company's history. It was the first full year during which the NT3050 was available and if anything Nutract struggled to keep pace with demand. "A nice problem to have," was how they described it at the time, vowing that this year would see the elimination of bottlenecks in the supply network. Unfortunately, thoughts of expanding the company's operations must now be put on hold, at least for a while. In the northern hemisphere, growers are now entering a time of peak activity and there have been a flurry of breakdowns. NT3050 incorporates a sophisticated module, the Ground Pressure Sensor, that is important for the efficient operation of the vehicle - and vital for operator safety since it reduces the danger of the machine rolling over on uneven ground. Almost four thousand NT3050s are reporting faults with this module. (Like most advanced farm vehicles, NT3050 has a condition monitoring system that tells its owner and the manufacturer of any such problems.) The fault has put them in a 'limited functionality' mode that reduces the power and efficiency of the vehicle until a new Ground Pressure Sensor can be fitted. A further 900 NT3050s are reported to have put themselves in 'emergency shutdown' and won't move at all until a new Ground Pressure Sensor can be fitted. In all cases, the NT3050 is still under warranty. Nutract engineers have subjected a number of failed Ground Pressure Sensors to testing. It appears that this is not a quality problem from the supply chain, but a design fault: the supplier made the item exactly as specified but the module is not durable enough. Nutract will need to fit every NT3050 with a redesigned Ground Pressure Sensor, but when this was discussed at an emergency staff meeting, the following problems were identified: - Nutract don't have a large enough staff of technicians to replace the Ground Pressure Sensor on every failed NT3050 in a timely manner. - More NT3050s are reporting faults daily, and this is likely to continue. - The current inventory is not adequate to permit replacement of all Ground Pressure Sensors, and in any case all such items have the same design fault and can be expected to fail in the future. - Owners need their NT3050s to be serviceable as soon as possible, or vital planting time will be lost. Any delay also does considerable harm to the reputation of Nutract. Nutract must now devise a strategy to minimise the impact of the problems described, reacting not as a single company but as a part of an integrated supply network, applying the principles of logistics and supply chain management. Note: Nutract is fictional, but the industry is a real one. Thus, you might support your report with evidence drawn from real-world sources such as market reports, scholarly articles, news media and other information found by researching the agricultural machinery industry. You may wish to draw upon lessons from other industries, e.g. product recalls and fixes seen elsewhere such as in the automotive or electronics sectors. You will also need to apply theory of the kind introduced during the module and in the recommended textbooks, perhaps discussing themes such as capacity and supply chain resilience. Where you are able to reflect background reading (in these and other areas) within your coursework, the result will be a more persuasive document