Quiz Questions On Supply Chain Management

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.

Supply-chain management consists of developing a strategy to organize, control, and motivate the resources involved in the flow of services and materials within the supply chain. A supply chain strategy, an essential aspect of supply chain management, seeks to design a firm’s supply chain to meet the competitive priorities of the firm’s operations strategy.

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.

A supply chain is a system of people, activities, information, and resource involved in creating a product and moving it their customers. First is the strategic supply chain management. Best value supply chains strive to excel along four measures. Speed is the time duration from initiation to completion of the production and distribution process. Quality refers to the relative reliability of supply chain activities. Supply chains’ efforts at managing cost involve enhancing value by either reducing expenses or increasing customer benefits for the same cost level. Flexibility refers to a supply chain’s responsiveness to changes in customers’ needs. The second component of the strategic supply chain is agility, the supply chain’s relative capacity to act rapidly in response to dramatic change in supply and demand. Adaptability refers to a willingness and capacity to reshape supply chains when necessary. Lastly, alignment refers to creating consistency in the interest of all participants in a supply

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Supply chain, its management, performance measures and improvement approaches. As an extension of the systems point of view, the system dynamics inherent in the supply chain are illustrated and the coordination in the supply chain is emphasized. Five areas where measurement of supply chain performance should be made are discussed. The five areas are on-time delivery, quality, time (business cycle) total delivered cost and flexibility.

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.

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.

For Customer service, supply chain is all about proving the logistics of delivering the right products at the right time. Sounds simple but there are factors such as: reordering the product, supplier inventory is not enough, no consignment storage, delivery time not met, redesigning the planning. This challenge is effective and significant on both downstream and upstream of the process it affects the downstream as business partners are the one being effected upon the ordering and delivery of the product as without the product delivered they can’t start the next phase of their process; as for upstream this is extremely effective not just as revenue stream but to honor the continuous partnership shipping and delivering the product to customer is critical. Cost control of operating expense in direct and indirect commodity costs, logistic agile costs under pressure upon rising fuel/energy and freight cost, global business partners, technology investment, labor cost of recruits and manufacturing floor, and always the

Supply chains represent the procurement, production and distribution activities of an organisation. Within a supply chain, these activities are viewed as linked and reliant on one another to produce the final outcome. It is believed that if one component of the chain fails, the whole chain is broken and product/service delivery goals will not be achieved.

To start, it is vital to clarify the concept of a supply chain. It consists basically of all the process that the materials suffer as they flow from the source to the final customer. There are many concepts linked to this term, purchasing, warehousing, manufacturing, etc. Or more precisely: “a supply chain is a system of business enterprises that link together to satisfy consumer demand. The elements of a supply chain can be contained in the same business or be part of different companies” (Riddalls et Al., 2000)

Supply chain is a major part of a business. It is a huge network which involves suppliers, customers, retailers, distributors and transporters. Supply chain is all about getting right goods at right place at a right price and at a right time .Time plays a very important role in any business .Time is money .Suppliers and customers are the two major participant’s .Demand and supply plays a very important role for a company’s profitability. Every company looks for profitability .In order to gain a competitive advantage over another company costs must be lowered throughout the chain by driving out unnecessary expenses and they also should take

Concepts that we will use to manage our supply chain can be just in time, available to promise and total quality management. Just in time is use to make sure we have the right amount of inventory to fill orders without a large amount of inventory. Available to promise takes the current inventory that we have and allows our customers to see how much they can order and the shipping dates. This eliminates any backorders or late shipping due to our fault as a company. Total quality management allows for all the employees in the production process to improve the products. Be having this sort of participation (David Johnson, 2011) from the whole team will allow our company to exceeded customer expectations.

10. It also provides the best organizational structure needed to improve the supplier coordination by integrating the logistics, production and purchasing processes together.

The Supply Chain required the cooperation of all the company 's internal departments with external parties, for example, the supplier to get a product that meets market needs in a timely manner. And that there is integration of all parties in terms of the information involved at the right time to get the right product for the right quantities in the right place at the right time for the client to meet the requirement of the