Material Flows And Inventory Policy During Military Scm

This is something that must be addressed in supply chain management because if one area of the company is operating below capacity the other sectors will not be able to make up this lack of production. Another main component of supply chain management is how to handle damaged goods. It is a waste of money to send out defective products because it costs the organization large amounts of money to recall the damaged materials back to the factory and replace them, slowing production efficiency. There must be quality controls and regulations that enable Ford to minimize inventory defects and returns. The Ford Motor Company must have damage control operations to continue manufacturing the same amount of automobiles so that they do not lose any necessary inventory. There must also be procedures in place that deal with delivery systems and the delays and unsuitable materials that could easily occur. This paper will fully break down the previous issues associated with the Ford Motor Company 's supply chain management and operations. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT OF FORD Synopsis of Supply Chain Management as it Applies to Ford The definition of supply chain management (SCM) involves taking a systems approach to the entire supply chain with the overall goal of reducing the level of risk and uncertainty throughout the supply chain. This will ultimately permit lower

Knowing the importance of maintaining combat troops in theater, an efficient supply system was created, giving boots to the ground soldiers the advantage over their foes. The technological advances in transportation enhanced the Army’s supply system to move goods almost overnight. Army forces through mutual interdependence rely upon joint capabilities, air and maritime, to deliver sustainment to the theater of operations (US Army, 2012). The United States Army supply system is the most efficient in the world. We can move troops into the theater and sustain them indefinitely.

Logistics at the strategic level of U.S. operations is important in posturing and maintaining the Army to accomplish combined arms maneuver and wide area security. Transportation and maintenance contractors are vital to U.S. missions and provide valuable

Flood of the century or not, tech companies are taking steps to limit their exposure to the next traumatic event. Some are revising their inventory models; others are implementing supply chain software and setting up Web supplier hubs. Everyone wants tighter collaboration with suppliers and timelier information from customers. Tech companies are trying, in short, to make their supply chains shorter, transparent, and as flexible as possible. Rethinking of supply chain management at large networking, telecom equipment, PC and chipmakers is the remedy in this unstable

In the United States Marine Corps, the Logistics department is an essential component of the organization. The logistics department handles embarkation, supply and weapons management, maintenance of equipment, health services support, transportation, and ammunition (S-4, n.d.). Within the Logistics department, every employee has a unique title and job description. The junior employees may have one or two other coworkers with their same title and set of responsibilities.

Logistics is one of the main functions within a company, and the supply chain is a complex and sometime fragile global endeavor dependent on a network of independent, yet interconnected, moving parts. It requires professional management. Supply chain professionals order the product, build it, move it, ship it, distribute it, and drive the coordination processes with marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing, finance, and information technology. In short, they make any business effort seem effortless.

As one of the world’s leading security company, Northrop Grumman is striving to keep up with its fast-growing scope. One of Northrop’s main secrets in providing top notch capability and cost efficiency to its customers is making their supply chain management and logistics the company’s priority. Northrop has three large different supply chains concentrating on aerospace systems, mission systems and technology services.

Due to the broad objectives of defending national security and interests imposed on the military, demand for the flow of material and personnel across military supply chains can be extremely variable and unpredictable. Furthermore, the differences in specific operations and functions of the military can be significant, spanning from small peacekeeping operations to major combat deployments to disaster relief. The figure in Appendix A illustrates this complexity by summarizing key military operations and deployments for the Canadian Forces from 1990-2004, and grouping them by mission type and geography (Girard, et al.).

First Logistics Aviation Supply Office was established on October 1, 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 200 civilian employees and 14 officers (NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support, 2013). Their mission is to support navy aviation and weapon systems. Aviation Supply Office’s number of employees has grown to 5, 332 civilians, 507 officers, and 676 enlisted personnel four years later since they opened on October 1, 1941 (NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support, 2013). On October 2, 1995 Aviation Supply Office merged with Ships Parts Control Center from Mechanicsburg and changed their agency’s name to Naval Inventory Control Point. According to the Department of Defense, “the purpose for merging was to bring together all of the Navy’s Program Support Inventory Control Point function under one command. This was also supposed to reduce cost and infrastructure to standardized inventory management procedures” (NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support, 2013). On July 1, 2011, Naval Inventory Control Point changed its name again to Naval Supply Weapon Systems Support. Naval Supply System Command wanted all to be under One Naval Supply, “Enterprise-wide branding initiative where each Naval Supply activity supports the ‘Global Logistics Support Network’ as a node in the network vice as individual entity. No organization structural changes were made” (NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support, 2013).

Reverse Logistics. Once a customer places an order for an item and the item has an associated return value, the GCSS-A system populates a list that so that all parties can see and know what part needs to be returned and that it indeed has and associated return value. This is the true start point of the reverse pipeline of the Army’s supply chain. The Army’s reparable management process recovers and repairs assets (repair parts) to replenish serviceable inventories and satisfy the equipment readiness requirements. Commanders are responsible to ensure that their subordinate units are in compliance with local policy and Army publications (US Army, 2014). The Army uses a system call Standard Pricing (SP), which enables the Army to receive a

In reverse logistics, the design, control, and operation of a recovery value system will reflect the whole life cycle of a product. This is the concept of closed-loop supply chains, in which zero-waste is achieved in the “forward flows of materials (from suppliers to end customers) and the reverse flow of products (post consumption) back to the manufacturing or distribution supply chains” (Book p.151-152). Reverse logistics supports closed-loop supply chains and coordinating the chains to achieve (or maintain) competitive advantage. A fragmented chain, where each member is only focused on its own processes, is considered a key Supply Chain Management problem. It is not wise for Sandvik to fragment, or decouple the forward and reverse supply chains.

The most common implementations of supply chains throughout the US Army are focused on logistics and ensuring a continual stream of supplies to each base and installation. The periodic nature of supply chain planning for each base is made more challenging due to the need for greater levels of accounting accuracy and more effective approaches to statistical analysis of supply chain performance. These constraints over time have often been factored into the development of linear programming models used for simulating overall supply chain performance (Trainor, Parnell, Kwinn, Brence, 2007). Linear programming concentrates on solving complex supply chain problems including constrained logistics flows across multiple depots, locations and

(Bowersox, D.J., Closs, D.J., and Cooper, M.B. (2010). Supply Chain Logistics Management. (3rd Edition) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

     One of the first things that the military had to change was its attitude that logistics is the same thing as supply management. Logistics plays a very important role in the supply chain but supply chain management involves much more than simply logistics. (Hyland 2002) A team at Ohio State University developed a framework for supply chain management that consists of three supply chain elements: network structure, business processes; and management components.

Forward logistics (or conventional logistics) is the regular distribution channel followed by the manufactures from time immemorial. Forward logistics concentrates on the products (goods or services) reaching the consumer end and deals with the line of flow from the manufacturer’s end to the consumer’s end. It deals with the very essence of Supply Chain Management and logistical activities of an organization. It has a significant impact on the primary operations carried out, which act as the basic revenue generating aspect of a business. In this logistical system, the flow is a “one-to-many” type and the forecasting or traceability is quite simple.