1.1 Explain the importance of effective supply chain management in achieving your organizational objectives.
Supply Chain Management as defined as "Maximising added value and reducing total cost across the entire trading process through focusing on speed and certainty of response to the market”.
Competitive Edge through Core Competencies
Today's business climate has rapidly changed and has become more competitive as ever in nature. Businesses now not only need to operate at a lower cost to compete, it must also develop its own core competencies to distinguish itself from competitors and stand out in the market. In creating the competitive edge, companies need to divert its resources to focus on what they do best and outsource the
…show more content…
Mass manufacturing offers productivity advantage but through effective supply chain management, mass customization can be achieved. With mass customization, customers are given the value advantage through flexible manufacturing and customized adaptation. Product life cycles also can be improved through effective use of SCM. Value advantage also changes the norm of traditional offerings that is 'one-size-fits-all.' Through SCM, the more accepted offerings by the industry to the consumers would be a variety of products catered to different market segments and customers preferences.
1.2 Explain the link between supply chain management and business functions in an organization
There are numerous definitions of the supply chain and supply chain management:
“The supply chain conceptually covers the entire physical process from obtaining the raw materials through all process steps until the finished product reaches the end consumer. Most supply chains consist of many separate companies, each linked by virtue of their part in satisfying the specific need of the end consumer
Supply chain management may be thought of as the management of all activities aimed at satisfying the end consumer; as such it covers almost all activity within the organization. It has been suggested that it incorporates a number of key success factors which include a clear procurement strategy, effective control systems, and
Supply chains are networks of organisations, information, technologies, activities and resources involved in the movement and conversion of physical goods or services from suppliers to end consumers. These different organisations are interlinked by physical, information and monetary flows. Organisations create value by transforming raw products into finished goods or repositioning of resources thru space and time, which is based on networks of supply chains. Both ways, it involves the movement and conversion of physical goods and information throughout supply chains across the world. Therefore organisations and supply chains are closely interlinked in the creation of value for its customers. Manufacturing firms produce goods for
Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Volume 7, Number 5, 2002, pp. 271 – 282;
Success for many organizations depends on the firm’s ability to balance product and process changes while exceeding customer expectations for improved cost delivery and quality. In lieu of these issues firms have started to implement principles of supply chain management. Supply chain management mainly involves managing the flow of incoming materials, manufacturing operations, and downstream distribution has to be in alignment that is responsive to change in customer demands eliminating a surplus of inventory.
The supply chain management is considered as a management concept from past two decades as the customers are concerned about timely and safe delivery. The competitiveness has been increasing among the companies to deliver the products as quickly as possible to the customers all around the world. This has made the supply chain management as a vital tool for the management. This is also measured as a competitive parameter for the companies.
Mellat-Parast and Spillan (2014) defines supply chain management as the method of handling material and information moves from the beginning, through the organization, and to the end-user. This is a very important factor of organizational strategy.
To start, Schroeder, R., Goldstein, S., and Rungtusanatham define supply chain as “the set of entities and relationships that cumulatively define materials and information flows both downstream toward the customer and upstream toward the very first supplier.” Schroeder, R., Goldstein, S., and Rungtusanatham goes on to identify supply chain management as “the design and management of seamless, value-added processes across organizational boundaries to meet the real needs of the end customer.” Organizations have to prepare themselves to the best of their ability in order to provide or their customers. Customers expect to receive the upmost service, regardless of the type of organization they make contact with.
It begins with the suppliers of raw materials and ends through direct retailers of finished products sold to consumers. Companies rely on effective Supply Chain Management to ensure that throughout the life stages of procurement, development, production and retail, all stages are handled optimally and that the best outcomes are achieved. to improve on Alpha's current supply chain management system they should focus on three key area's:
Supply chain management has become an important issue in today’s business world, it is used by many companies to improve their competitive advantage (Vickery, Calantone & Droge, 1999). In a supply chain, the customer is the most impart part and seeing that every company seeks to please their customers, supply chain management therefore helps companies in satisfying the needs of the customer which involves the management of various aspects such as manufacturing, suppliers, transportation, information and retailers to deliver value to the customers (Chopra & Meindl, 2007).
The average company spends nearly half of every dollar it earns on production needs—goods and services it needs from external suppliers to keep producing. A supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in the procurement of a product or raw material. Supply chain management (SCM) involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.
Supply chain management is a complex undertaking that must involve more than one organization’s efforts to succeed. A tremendous amount of skill, time, and money must be present to build and develop relationships, discover and implement a strategy, and use the capabilities of the chain to build quality at an efficient financial rate. Allowing for these requirements, it leaves one to wonder whether supply chain management is a viable option. The answer is yes, because an organization needs a strong supply chain to compete and be profitable in the marketplace. The key points for supply chain management should be to meet customer demand, produce excellent customer value, enhance responsiveness to change, build a network that can resist risk, and develop financial success.
Supply chain is one of the critical aspects that can make or break any company. The research will also concentrate on aspects of supply chain.
Supply Chain Management (SCM) represents the end to end value chain of a business from production to after-sales service. According to Schulz, a well-managed supply chain should be market focused, stating that the supply chain should strongly represent the market needs and “what solutions consumers are looking for, not the product we are trying to sell them”. However is the philosophy of SCM merely just a new supply chain thinking approach to older existing SCM practice? For example, Quality Management which is deeply rooted in the concept of SCM although not in self-new, has evolved over time, and is based upon the concept of having total commitment to everyone is the supply chain to deliver quality service/products to both the internal and
This article is about supply chain management (SCM). Its importance in the field of operation management. Supply chain management was discussed from the past three decades. This article tells about how supply chain management developed and how it will proceed in the future. The term “supply chain management” first appeared in the practitioner literature in 1982, which said that SCM is a way to manage resources and assets in a better way.
According to our class text Supply Chain Management’s goal is to create fast, efficient, and low-cost network of business relationships to get a company’s product from concept to market. In order to understand the goal we must know that the supply chain is the process the raw materials of a product go through in order to be available to the consumer. The relationships that the business creates are needed in order to create the product, each process the product goes through creates value, the supply chain is often called the value chain. Internet technologies are increasingly making the supply chain management process much more efficient and worth the initial investment. The supply chain management life
Supply chain management is a main process in all kinds of companies. That’s because an optimized supply chain results in lower costs and a faster production cycle.