A Conceptual Framework for Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Volume 7, Number 5, 2002, pp. 271 – 282;

Supply chains must be managed to coordinate the inputs with the outputs in a firm to achieve the appropriate competitive priorities of the firm’s enterprise processes. The Internet offers firms an alternative to traditional methods for managing supply chains. A supply chain strategy is essential

Supply chains manage the movement of products from the acquisition of raw materials through production and finally distribution to the end user. A properly designed supply chain can create many opportunities to drive down cost and increase revenue opportunities. In order to create a supply chain that is sustainable and flexible it is necessary to identify and align company goals and initiatives with the manufacturing and distribution of products.

Supply chain management is a practice that involves the planning, supervision, and implementation of strategies and controls to direct the movement of goods and services provided to customers. The intent of this essay is to incorporate a synopsis of existing literature and to provide the reader with a general understanding of how supply chain management correlates with the organizational design and structure of modern firms. The essay comprehensively reviews the components of supply chain management and their integration with functional areas within an organization. The information presented in this essay

A Supply Chain (SC) is an integrated process where involves various parties who are directly or indirectly working together to fulfil a customer’s demand. These parties can be manufacturers, suppliers, transporters, warehouses, distributers, retailers and end consumers. The functions of the SC cover a variety of areas, such as R&D, information flow, marketing, finance, distribution, operation, and customer services.

Simchi, D., Kaminsky, P., Shankar, R. (2008). Designing and managing the supply chain: concepts, strategies, and case studies, 3, 384-385.

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.

The globalization of organizations and more competitive forces have compelled more manufacturing businesses to improve an efficient supply chain planning for reducing the cost of supply chain. Planning of supply chain is being the critical component of business’ management. Supply chains have conventionally been split, being unsuccessful to assimilate the business utilities in the chain of logistics process. Such difficulties, as extended order lead times, high inventory costs, and struggle in answering proactive to real time variations, having lower profits and weak client goodwill that can be determined by putting together supply chain management schemes for transportation and warehousing. Supply chain can be explained as a combined practice where actually numerous different organizations individuals such as manufactures, retailers, distributors, and suppliers perform together in order to obtain raw materials, transform these raw materials into wanted ultimate products and supply these ultimate products to the vendors. The key methods in this combined procedure are the distribution, logistics, production planning and control. The production and planning steps are two of the most crucial parts to obtain worldwide optimization in supply chain management. And, this should be explained inside the integrated planning infrastructure. Interactive parts of supply chain included key parts such as purchase, production, logistics planning, sale, production and manufacturing

SCM is therefore the discipline that aims to understand the firms’ practices and strategies in managing the supply chain. As I said before, many academics tried to build a framework for the understanding of it, but being SCM a relatively new subject all of them present strengths and weaknesses and it is extremely difficult to say which of the framework is more reliable.

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.

Based upon his ten years research on supply chain issues in diverse industries such as food, fashion, apparel and automobiles he devises a framework which will help

The ultimate goal is to effectively change the nature of the relationships between vendors and buyers from a traditional perspective to a non-traditional one. Comparatively, when implementing SCM, firms must take in to consideration the impact of the human side of the equation whereas, CRM though relationship based, affects all aspect of supply chain and directly influence performance. More than likely, the base setup such as the information and technology systems needed to implement the supply chain system will be readily available and can be executed almost immediately. Even with all this in place, there are instances where a number of supply chain and customer relationships initiatives fail due to lack of communication or clear and concise expectations from all parties involved. The customer relationship aspect is usually assumed by managers of a firm, and thus tries to merge the SCM and CRM, the result of said merger often end up being one the most difficult part of the integration.

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) is based on the philosophy that firms operating in a supply chain are oriented to the provision of goods and services for the ‘final customer’ (Lambert and Cooper, 2000) . The literature strongly suggests that that cohesive collaboration in the supply chain can provide important benefits such as added value, efficiencies and client satisfaction (Stock, Boyer and Harmon,

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.