Supply Chain Management & Trends

Production and Operations Management

Term Paper

Supply Chain Management

SCM Aspects & a Look at Current Trends

I- Supply Chain Management in brief

o An Introduction

o Functions of Supply Chain Management

II- Supply Chain Management Integration:

o Supply chain business process integration

 Customer Service Management

 Procurement

 Product Development and Commercialization

 Manufacturing Flow Management

 Physical Distribution

 Outsourcing

 Performance Measurement

o Supply chain management components integration

 Management Components of SCM

 Reverse Supply Chain

III- Supply Chain Management Development:

o Why develop a Supply Chain?

o Methods of Developing Supply Chain

IV- Trends in Supply Chain Management:

o Demand planning

o Spreading Globalization

o Price Pressures and Increased Competition

o Outsourcing

o Changing Product Life Cycles

o Stakeholder Collaboration in Supply Chains

o How is technology affecting Supply Chains Systems today?

V- Conclusion

VI- References

I- Supply Chain Management in brief:

An Introduction:

The concept of Supply Chain Management was adopted in the 1980s and introduced the concept of integrating key operations and business processes from the chain of materials that pass from all suppliers to the end customer. Throughout the chain, suppliers add value gradually to the product by providing materials, information and services for customers and other stakeholders.

Accessible information that is relevant to companies in the supply chain has to reach every element of the supply chain in order to benefit the chain as a whole instead of just the company itself. Hence, this will lead to better productivity and overall distribution as it will cut costs, provide a product for the end-user and increases the involved companies’ success. Incorporating SCM successfully leads to a new kind of competition on the global market where competition is no longer of the company versus company form but rather takes on a supply chain versus supply chain form.

The primary goal of supply chain management is to satisfy customer by providing efficient resource usage, distribution requirement planning, inventory and labor planning. Also, optimizing the supply chain means eliminating bottlenecks in the chain; implementing JIT techniques to optimize manufacturing flow; and using logistics optimization to maximize efficiency of the distribution side. During the 1990s several companies began outsourcing SCM to third party logistics (3PL) in order to create an overall faster flow of resources in the chain.

Functions of Supply Chain Management:

Supply Chain Management has several functions starting from movement of raw materials into an organization, internal processing of the materials and finally distribution to the end-consumer. Companies nowadays tend to focus more on their competencies rather than their raw materials and distribution channels. These functions are increasingly being outsourced to other companies that can perform the activities better or more cost effectively. The overall result is to have more companies involved in satisfying customers while decreasing a management’s control over daily logistics operations. This overall effect has lead to the concepts of supply chain management. The aim of supply chain management is to improve trust and collaboration among supply chain partners and accordingly improving inventory visibility and improving inventory velocity.

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