Foundations of Business Administration

[pic 1][pic 2]FACULTAD DE CONTADURIA PÚBLICA

LICENCIATURA EN NEGOCIOS INTERNACIONALES

Foundations of Business Administration

Case study development - Chinese chopsticks

Evidence # 1

Profr. Dr. Manuel Vázquez

Names:                                                                                 Matriculas:

Arturo Acosta Quintanilla                                     1836236

Jared Jaser Salinas Sánchez                              1683370

Diana Laura Resendiz Vázquez                          1718999

Diana Belen Vargas Flores                                  1664524

Glorybet Rangel Garza                                        1680651

Carlos Antonio Garza Molina                               1836152

Fernanda Yanine Lozano Pérez                           1663964

Team Number: # 5

Group: 1Bi 612

San Nicolás de los Garza                                     February 17th, 2016

Abstract:

One of the big challenges of a modern firm is to use the available resources and achieve the maximum efficiency use of them, alongside with the responsible use of the goods and services that the people need in order to satisfy their necessities. To keep up with the market’s demand, it is necessary to perform different types of management functions and activities that sometimes may or may not be friendly to nature. When this happens, important issues start to emerge and now it is the turn for the managers of the firm to create the best solution to solve these issues without damaging the product or service and the economy.

MEXAP is a national commercial retail firm, which means that we want to sell at retail costs to our customers. This firm started with the vision of meeting the needs of the society by creating products that satisfy their needs and therefore, reduce the risks of investing in the firm. This company is in charge of producing chopsticks which its mainly use is for Chinese and Japanese restaurants, therefore, the firm is in charge of supplying this utensils to several Chinese and Japanese restaurants and supermarkets around the country.

This production of this product seems to be aggressive for the environment because the raw material is obtained from trees, a natural resource that nowadays is being exploited from many other firms, which is why this company as a responsible and environmental-friendly firm, is focused in demonstrating respect of the environment and committed to create an innovative solution to decrease the unfair use of the environment alongside with our affiliated small firm in charge of  funerary products created with MEXAP.

Description of the Sustainability Issues:

Economic Impact:

MEXAP is a firm related to the production of utensils mainly used for oriental food.  We’ve discussed the story of the knife and fork, but there’s another set of utensils used by billions of people around the world, like the chopsticks. The chopsticks were invented in ancient China. The Chopsticks were considered more lacquerware friendly than other sharp eating utensils. It was not until the Ming dynasty that chopsticks came into normal use for both serving and eating. They then acquired the name kuaizi and the present shape. Because of that we realized that this is a huge business in the East Asia continental and it could be a great idea produce them and help the environment as well.  The short-term goals of our firm are being able to successfully achieve a good number of sales in a regional range in order to get into a national range. For the long-term goals of our company are to posicionate the firm in the global market and become the best-selling #1 company in chopsticks. [pic 3]

Social Impact:

Because of our several industries spread all over the country, we can employ over 1,000 persons per industry. They will allow the firm to produce our product with the best quality and the best service we can offer and increase the number of industries in the country and implement the best technology to get the best performance possible in each one of our industries.

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Environmental Impact:

To produce chopsticks, we use a big amount of wood, we use it because is a renewable, beautiful material, it is also durable, versatile and can be cost-effective.  The problem is that we do not use the 100% of it to make our product, a lot of residues are left behind and we know too that the raw material is obtained from trees, a natural resource that nowadays is being exploited and it’s a problem that it's affecting us and our planet.

Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes and also deforestation drives climate change. So we think in a solution for this problem and we decided to help and give money to Espacios naturales y Desarrollo sustentable  wich is one of the top 10 of the organizations in Mexico that helps the environment, the  organization is focused on restoring the areas that have been damaged by human action. It has recovered thousands of hectares of forests, jungles and wetlands in many parts of the country. And our solution to avoid harming the environment with the residues of our production process will be sent to our affiliated firm called Funerals MEXAP S.A. de C.V. to decrease to costs of labor and allow the company to be more competitive in the national market. The firm also provides the option of making chopsticks made of plastic. We know that plastic residues damage the environment in a huge amount, therefore, we have an agreement with one of the most famous firms in PET bottling production, Arca Continental. Because of the residues of the plastic chopsticks’ production, we can obtain a big amount of plastic and sell it to Arca Continental to make or create bottles for the products that they produce.

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Innovation:

The innovation that we are looking for in our project is involved with the residues of the raw materials that we use after the production process with wooden chopsticks or the other option that we offer to our customers; plastic chopsticks. We know that wood and plastic can make a big damage to the environment without the proper dispose of the residues of these materials, instead of just disposing this residues in the proper way, we thought about creating a new way to obtain profits with something that many people think that would not get profit to the firm, residues.

Residues will depend on the products that firms offer to the market, in our case, the residues that our company leave are mainly wood and plastic residues. Our solution to avoid every possible damage that the environment can get and earn profits with it is to:

For the residues of the production of wooden chopsticks: An environmental-friendly solution for the residues of wood is to gather the residues and provide them to our affiliated firm, Funerals MEXAP, and they will be responsible to turn these residues into, for example: coffins. As an affiliated firm, Funerals MEXAP will split the earnings of the sales in their products and give us a determinate part of the earnings.

For the residues of the production of plastic chopsticks: The solution planned to reduce environmental damage with this type of residues, is to gather all of our plastic residues and thanks to our agreement with the bottling firm Arca Continental sell them these residues.

Arca Continental is the second largest Coca-Cola bottler in Latin America's and one of the largest in the world, serving over 50 million consumers in Mexico, Argentina and Ecuador.

Arca Continental, and Praxair have maintained a strategic relationship for over 30 years, where trade agreements are maintained long-term relationship based on commitment, trust, service and high quality product. Arca Continental has relied on Praxair to be its sole supplier of Carbon Dioxide Grade Ingredient, representing a major commitment, considering that this is a strategic input in the production of carbonated beverages, the ingredient being Coca-Cola calls "the spark of life. "

Arca Continental Nitrogen is also consumer-grade food product for packaging and pressurized bottles of noncarbonated beverages where nitrogen use extends shelf life; as well as the service we provide analysis and replacing air filters.

This is an appropriate solution because these are two profitable ways of using residues to make other products and avoid harming the environment. The firms that use the residues that we provide to them also gain benefits like lowering costs of raw material and a trust-based relationship with us in a way that they can be sure that we are going to help them to get the materials they need to produce their products.

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