Assigment 4 : Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing and procurement, conversion and all logistics management activities. It also includes coordination and collaboration with channel partners which can be suppliers, intermediaries , third-party service providers and customers. Supply chain management integrates supply and demand management within and across companies. Supply chain management is an integrating function with primary responsibility for linking major business functions and business process within and across companies into a cohesive and high-performing business model.

The process pf planning , implementing and controlling the operations of the supply chain with the purpose of satisfying the customer's requirement as efficiently as possible. Supply Chain spans all movement and storage of raw materials , work-in-process, inventory and finished goods from the point of consumption. It's a powerful new source of competitive advantage.

Why its important for the organization?
- To remain competitive, companies must seek new solutions such as modal analysis, supply chain management and load planning.
-Faster product availability and speeds delivery to customers.
- As the corporations strive to focus on core competencies and become more flexible, they have reduces their ownership of raw materials sources.
-To increase the number of companies involved in satisfying consumer demand while reducing the management control on daily logistics operations.

There are four basic components of supply chain management :-
1) Supply chain strategy - It's the strategy for managing all the resources required to meet customer demand for all products and services. Example when the customers demand for the new application of the cell phone, the company needs to find a way to achieve the demand of customers such as create a new application on the cell phone or provide the new phone that can meet customer demand

2) Supply chain partner - It's the partners chosen to deliver finished products, raw materials and services including pricing, delivery and payment process along with partner relationship monitoring metrics or measurements. Partners need to measure the number of product that had been using by the customers. Example for the photostat shop, how many rim paper that they need to be using for a month.

3) Supply chain operations - It's the schedule for production activities including testing, packaging and preparation for delivery. Measurements for this component include productivity or quality.  This components requires many step or level for the products to produce. Because every products need to be test or produce in a quality that provided from the company.

4) Supply chain logistics - It's the product delivery process and elements including orders, warehouse, carries , defective product returns and invoicing. This components it's more in final step for the product. To make sure customer receive the product that they expected or orders. Company need to have a good relationship with the customer to maintain the profits.

*if you want to find another information about this topic, here is the link:
http://supplychainmanagement.in/scm/index.htm

The supply chain principles are:-

• Segment customers based on service needs
• Customise the supply chain management network
• Listen to signals of market demand and plan accordingly
• Differentiate product closer to the customer
• Strategically manage the sources of supply
• Develop a supply-chain-wide technology strategy
• Adopt channel-spanning performance measures