Cross-Functional Alignment in Supply Chain Planning

Supply chain operations focus on demand planning, forecasting, and inventory management. Forecasts estimate customer demand for a particular product during a specific period of time based on historical data, external drivers such as upcoming sales and promotions, and any changes in trends or competition. Using

Arntzen, B. C., G. G. Brown, T. P. Harrison, L. L. Trafton. 1995. Global supply chain management at Digital Corporation. Interfaces 25(1) 69-93.

A supply chain is a net work of firms. Thus, each firm in the chain should build its own supply chains to support the competitive priorities of its services or products. Two distinct designs used to competitive advantage are efficient supply chains and responsive supply chains. Efficient supply chains work best in environments where demand is highly predictable. The focus of the supply chain is on efficient flows of services and materials keeping inventories to a minimum. The firm’s competitive priorities are low-cost operations, consistent quality, and on-time delivery. Responsive supply chains designed to react quickly in order to hedge against uncertainties in demand. Work best when firms offer a great variety of services or products and demand predictability is low. Typical competitive priorities are development speed, fast delivery times, customization, variety, volume flexibility, and top quality. Tables below show the environments and design features that best suit each design.

In the following sections I will propose a supply chain strategy which will align company goals and initiatives increasing efficiency and driving down cost thereby creating a sustainable competitive advantage through the implementation of a synergistic supply chain strategy.

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

(Taken from “Managing Operations Across the Supply Chain” 2nd Edition, by Swink, Melnyk, Cooper, Hartley, Publisher McGraw-Hill, ISBN: 13: 978-1-12-180339-8)

Based on the Supply Chain Movement website, OM Partners had already implemented Integrated Planning and Detailed Scheduling at Shaw in order to provide a standard solution for end-to-end visibility over both short-term and mid-term horizons. This accommodated a number of major requirements like the single interface for manufacturing planning, scheduling and distribution planning, multi-operation

Russell, R. S., & Taylor III, B. W. (2014). Operations and Supply Chain Management, 8th edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Effective supply chain management can provide an important competitive advantage for a business marketer, resulting in improved communication and involvement among members of the chain, increased motivation, and decreased costs. Tracking the movement of and demand for components used to manufacture a product across a variety of potential and actual suppliers, provides insight and the ability to respond instantly to shortages, surpluses, and changes in market conditions. It seeks to optimize production, decrease manufacturing time, minimize inventory, streamline order fulfillment, and reduce cost.

The multifunctional nature of Operations Management requires a high level of process- and system-based synchronization across many different departments and divisions to be successful. The structural organization of the US Army is heavily dependent on Operations Management for missions to be accomplished, and long-term strategic visions to be attained (VanVactor, 2007). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how the five areas of accounting, industrial engineering, management, management science and statistics, in conjunction with critical path analysis and linear programming, are used extensively throughout the US Army's supply chain operations.

Product characteristics are found to have major influences on supply chain design and planning (Novak & Eppinger, 2001; Salvador, 2002; Fixson, 2005; Caridi et al., 2010; Hashemi & Butcher, 2011). Yet to date, this is not well covered in the scholarly literature (Khan & Creazza, 2009; Caridi et al., 2009; Pero et al., 2010). There are different approaches to investigate this association, but a general concurrence within this body of work suggests that closer cooperation between product design management and supply chain management functions will enhance the performance of supply chains and reduce risk and uncertainty.

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

As director of Supply Chain Systems, Teri Takai recommends implementing virtual integration strategies from companies like Dell to portions of Ford’s supply chain strategy. Although there are several key differences between the companies, the restructuring plans of Ford 2000 have set a viable foundation to implement Dell’s virtual integration strategy in inventory management, customer service and support and suppliers’ management. The redesign of the process must include design not only of the supply chain but also of fulfillment, forecasting, purchasing, and a variety of other functions that historically been considered independently within the Ford hierarchy. Teri

The class text states that Supply chain management is frequently divided into supply chain planning applications, supply chain execution applications, logistics management, and warehouse management. Often when companies fail at implementing an efficient supply chain because of the planning section, or inaccurate demand forecasts. The text states electronic data interchange is one of the earliest uses of information technology for supply chain management, Electronic data interchange is the use of the Internet for everyday business transactions. “In this era of information a firm’s supply chain should operate at speed of thought and this is possible only by enhanced e-speed communications and information sharing with their critical partners.” (4)

1We would like to thank Shiming Deng for his valuable contributions to the preparation of this manual.