Question list
What is supply chain management?
Supply chain management encompasses the planning and management of all activities
involved in sourcing and procurement, conversion, and all logistics management activities.
Importantly, it also includes coordination and collaboration with channel partners,
which can be suppliers, intermediaries, third party service providers, and customers.
In essence, supply chain management integrates supply and demand management within
and across companies.
Boundaries and Relationships: Supply chain management is an integrating function
with primary responsibility for linking major business functions and business processes
within and across companies into a cohesive and high-performing business model.
It includes all of the logistics management activities noted above, as well as manufacturing
operations, and it drives coordination of processes and activities with and across
marketing, sales, product design, finance, and information technology.
What is a supply chain?
The supply chain — a term now commonly used internationally — encompasses every
effort involved in producing and delivering a final product or service, from the
supplier's supplier to the customer's customer . Supply chain management includes
managing supply and demand, sourcing raw materials and parts, manufacturing and
assembly, warehousing and inventory tracking, order entry and order management,
distribution across all channels, and delivery to the customer.
Due to its wide scope, supply chain management must address complex interdependencies;
in effect creating an "extended enterprise" that reaches far beyond the factory
door. Today, material and service suppliers, channel supply partners (wholesalers
/ distributors, retailers), and customers themselves, as well as supply chain management
consultants, software product suppliers and system developers, are all key players
in supply-chain management.
Why is supply chain management important?
Two main reasons – money and opportunity. Advances in information technology (IT)
and the expanding IT infrastructure are introducing new possibilities to improve
service and efficiencies, and given the amount of money at stake, the opportunities
are high. Some people view the IT tools that underlie supply chain management as
the backbone of e-commerce.
In years past, manufacturers were the drivers of the supply chain — managing the
pace at which products were manufactured and distributed. Today, customers are calling
the shots, and manufacturers are scrambling to meet customer demands for options
/ styles / features, quick order fulfillment, and fast delivery.
Manufacturing quality — a long-time competitive differentiator — is approaching
parity across the board, so meeting customers' specific demands for product delivery
has emerged as the next critical opportunity for competitive advantage.
Companies that learn how to improve management of their supply chain will become
the new success stories in the global marketplace. Benchmarking studies show significant
cost differences between organizations that exhibit best-in-class performance and
those with average performance.
What challenges do companies face as they try to improve SCM?
Improving a process as complex as the supply chain can be daunting, as companies
are challenged with finding ways to meet ever-rising customer expectations at a
manageable cost. To do so, businesses must identify which parts of their supply
chain process are not competitive, understand which customer needs are not being
met, establish improvement goals, and rapidly implement necessary improvements.
Industry has long lacked a standard way to measure supply chain performance. Because
of this, manufacturers and service providers were unable to use a common assessment
tool — benchmarking — in the effort to improve their performance. Moreover, the
lack of a common means to describe supply chain processes rendered software selection
difficult and usually expensive.
Instead of finding the right tools for improving specific competitive gaps, businesses
often made huge investments in software that failed to address their particular
problem. All too often, available software products forced companies (often unwittingly)
to revamp their supply chain processes to suit some default criteria.
Who is a freight forwarder? / What is freight forwarding?
A Freight Forwarder is a person or a company that handles the logistics of a shipment
for a corporation or an individual to send goods from one place to another. They
take the burden off the clients shoulder and handle all the requirements needed
in processing the shipment from the point of origin to the destination. They arrange
for pickup, transport, warehousing, packing, labeling etc. Some of the advantages
that a customer will have while working with a freight forwarder are that they also
handle the Insurance, Customs, Documentation and Clearance.
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