The GadgetsEtc. has 25 stores (which are called "The Etc.") throughout the country where customers can buy their mobile phones. In the coming years, the company wants to expand its business to the rest of the Philippines and it might be expected that the volume will double. Usually, in a supply chain of mobile phones, phones are transported from factories to a wholesaler. This wholesaler distributes the phones to the various retailers. However, the GadgetsEtc. preferred to be no longer dependent on the wholesaler. Furthermore, one of the major suppliers (Tecnofone) of the GadgetsEtc. figured out that a lot of information was lost if all contacts go through a wholesaler. Therefore, both companies agreed to eliminate the wholesaler and have direct contact with each other. Tecnofone guarantees the GadgetsEtc. that it can always offer mobile phones of Tecnofone. Tecnofone takes care of all logistics activities of their phones. The transport and distribution of the mobile phones is outsourced to a third party logistics provider, Mobile Express. The PhoneShops can check electronically on the website of the central office of the GadgetsEtc. on the assortment of Tecnofone and place their orders once a week. The central office of the GadgetsEtc. submits the orders to the factory of Tecnofone in the south of Luzon near the port of Batangas There is one transport per week with mobile phones from Luzon to the distribution center of Mobile Express. In this distribution center the mobile phones are sorted over the various PhoneShops. Delivery vans transport the mobile phones to the PhoneShops. Transportation requests for various PhoneShops are not combined into one trip. From an environmental point of view,customers are encouraged to return their used and broken phones to the PhoneShops. There is one central depot inLos Banos, namely Tecnik, where returned mobile phones are collected.Mobile Express also needs to manage the flow of returned mobile phones from the PhoneShops to this central depot. At this depot phones are sorted by brand and once a week, delivery vans of Mobile Express need to transport the returned mobile phones of Tecnofone from the central depot back to the distribution center of Mobile Express.

a.DrawafiguretodescribethesupplychainoftheGadgetsEtc.and Tecnofone. Indicate clearly all flows of mobile phones and all flows of information.

b.Formulate5logisticsdecisionproblemsinthissupplychainofmobilephones.

c.Indicate 5 aspects of the current distribution structure, which could be improved and in which way, to deal effectively with the two growth scenarios of the coming years.