The Value Chain in My Life
Unit 1 Assignment
Marylin Cortes
Kaplan University
GB570: Managing the Value Chain
Professor: Jerry Haenisch
Date: February 4, 2013
The Value Chain in my Life
In order for a firm to create competitive advantage, it needs to create a set of activites that can deliver value to the specific product and services it offers to its customers. To start talking about my life as a “value chain”, I may need to compare it to a specific product”. This is going to take precedence both in my personal life and professional life.
I grew up in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, living most of my life on the country side with my Mom. My father was not in the picture, as he abandoned the house when I was very young.
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I was earning just a mere $6 an hour. A good friend adviced me to go to college. I took the challenge seriously and went to school to prepare as an administrative assistant.
This was a fantastic opportunity because it allowed me not only to learn new skills but also for me to grow as a person. Once someone decides to further their education, things are seeing so differently. It is learning skills, learn about culture, even learn how to speak differently.
Fourteen years ago, I decided to come to Chicago and start a new life. Although I spoke English, it was somewhat limited, however, I was up to the challenge. I decided to continue my education here only about six years ago. First, I completed an Associates degree, then the Bachelors and now the MBA. Today, when it comes to my career, having an education have helped me significantly. I will soon be receving my promotion for hard work and dedication.
Education has been one of the ways I have been able to add competititive advantage in my personal life. Although there are other components critical to my personal success. These include: determination, willingness to learn, and dedication. Having a great job that reaps monetary rewards is great, however, there are other factors necessary to be successful. These include my value as a human being, what do I do for others, how I am with my family, who I am as a fiancé and
For me education has been always vital and a crucial determinant of my health. I finished high school and I am now on my way to finish college. I was able to receive my Associate’s Degree in communications. Currently I have an
While working for different places, has made me realized that you will need to work hard to become successful and education is very important.
I came to the United States at the age of 25 with no English knowledge. It was tough to live in a foreign country where all people were using different than my native language. For that reason I decided to enroll at Middlesex County College and started my adventure with education. In such situation it was necessary for myself to learn English and earn a degree in some field.
Education is the number one topic in most families, whether the family is rich or poor. Everyone knows that one cannot succeed without education, because lacking education is the barrier for any careers. In other words, education is essential in one’ life. Overall, education can influence a person’s direction in life by discovering his or her dream and having a suitable career.
My parents and I are both immigrants from the wonderful country of Vietnam. I’ve experienced two very different ways of learning from the countries I lived and currently am living in. For example, in Vietnam kids start school at the age of three and by the age of thirteen they can spend approximately twelve hours in school each day. These differences really opened my eyes to the importance of education. Because education is the key to success, I really wanted to work hard in order to get a good one. The more one learns, the more doors of opportunities will open. Since my parents never had the opportunity to have a good education, I feel really blessed that I have so many opportunities for a higher education. These opportunities can open major
“The value chain identifies where the value is added in an organization and links the process with the main functional
According to Walters & Rainbird (2007), companies create additional value for their customers by building value chains that identify, produce, deliver, and service customer needs (p. 164). Michael Porter identified the value chain concept in his 1985 book “Competitive Advantage” (Manktelow, n.d.). He proposed a general-purpose value chain that companies can use to analyze their activities and see how they connect. The chain is comprised of five primary activities: Inbound logistics, Operations, Outbound logistics, Marketing and sales, and Service.
Michael Porters (1998) value chain model addresses activities that create, deliver and support a company’s product or service and thus its overall position and competitive strength in the market for global competition shown in Fig. 1.
One of the biggest inspiration of my life is to meet my career. My encourage is that one time I can heard this following quote come truth “Nice to meet you” (My dream career). From my perspective education helps me to increase myself- awareness, go of what I am supposed to be and embrace who I really am.
The value chain also gives you the possibility to improve yourself against the competition. It helps you to create a better competition advantage.
Value chain is a part of the company’s core competences which plays a very important part to get competitive advantage on its competitors. A value chain is a whole series of activities that create value or add value to the end product. The total value delivered by the company is the sum of the total value built up all throughout the company. Michael porter developed this concept in his 1980 book ‘competitive advantage.
Harvard Business School invented the concept and believed that competitive advantage cannot be understood by looking at a firm as a whole. The disadvantages of a value chain could include a company becoming too segmented and result in a construed conception of the company’s most important values. Thus, the importance of a successful value chain lies within the linkage of the different processes it incorporates. All in all, the value chain can provide organizations a strategic framework for managing the hundreds of activities that go into making the final product.
Competitive advantage means more than merely surpassing what competitors can do. It also means discovering what a firm’s customers want and then adequately satisfy and exceed their expectations. The competitiveness of a firm is generated by how successful it is in achieving that which is most valuable, most important and most efficient. In other words, firms want to identify its most valuable customers, its most important products/markets and wants to perform the activities that are most efficient (Poppelaars, 2013). To achieve these goals, firms should utilize the value chain as a tool of process
The idea of a value chain was first proposed by Michael Porter (1985) who identified that the more value an organization creates, the more profitable it is likely to be. Porter describes the value chain as the internal processes or series of activities a company performs “to design, produce, market, deliver and support its product” (Porter, 1985). John Shank and V. Govindarajan (1993) describe the value chain in broader terms than does Porter, affirming “the value chain for any firm is the value-creating activities all the way from basic raw material sources from component suppliers through to the ultimate end-use product delivered into the final consumers hands.”
Marketing, R&D, manufacturing, and other activities comprise a firm’s value chain; firms configure activities to create superior customer value on a global basis.