How do I explain supply chain management to a complete layman, making them understand how important and diverse the applications are?
It's easier to understand what supply chain management entails if we flip the word around. Supply chain management is the management of the chain of supplies. Supplies come from somewhere, do something, then go elsewhere. And they usually do a lot of things along the way. Supply chain management is a broad perspective of a business's overall function in the economy. Then I usually grab something close to me. Star bucks coffee, for example. In here we have water, coffee beans, sugar, and milk. For the sake of simplicity. This water comes from the tap which comes from a spring or lake or river, which is filtered using activated charcoal in a factory a couple miles outside nowhere, and boiled using electricity that was generated some way or another by someone else. That coffee is poured over crushed up coffee beans from somewhere warm and probably very poor. That coffee is places in a cup that was assembled in a factory made of cardboard from wood pulp from trees. Then a splash of milk that was pasteurized 10 miles from here from the udders of countless cows from farms elsewhere. Then the sugar came from another warm and poor place and was processed and bleached and put in packets. The supply chain managers job is to figure out the best way to make all that. I like to think of supply chain management as applied corporate economics. It isn't just another branch of the corporate chain. It is a perspective. One must take a step back and look at the way everything is entangled and try to predict the effects of actions. When coca cola opened a plant in India, they needed water. Simple problem. Simple solution. They siphoned off water from a nearby river and used that. They sucked up so much water, in fact, that they dried out the river. Suddenly the people down stream have no water and tons of coke. And you need to have foresight. The vast majority of titanium came/comes from a mine in South Africa. Why happens to the prosthetic leg makers when those miners went on strike last year?It's a broad field.
Explain the nature and role of management information systems in strategic management?
Management Information Systems (MIS) can aid strategic management and decision making in plenty of ways, one of which are the development of various types of databases that represent different information depending on the needs of the management, with such databases, management can spot weaknesses, enforce corrective actions, detect trends and correlations, compare present with historical data, measure performance against a standard or a benchmark. They can also develop an entire software for specific kinds of industry, biggest and most classic example is the electronic supply-chain system of Wal-Mart. Hope this helped, good luck.
What are the drivers of supply chain management?
SCM consists of five drivers. Each of these drivers can be developed and managed to emphasize responsiveness or efficiency. As you investigate how a supply chain works, you learn about the demands it faces and the capabilities it needs to be successful.The five drivers are illustrated below1. Production – This driver can be made very responsive by building factories that have a lot of excess capacity and use flexible manufacturing techniques to produce a wide range of items. To be even more responsive, a company could do their production in many smaller plants that are close to major groups of customers so delivery times would be shorter. If efficiency is desirable, then a company can build factories with very little excess capacity and have those factories optimized for producing a limited range of items. Further efficiency can also be gained by centralizing production in large central plants.2. Inventory – Responsiveness can be enhanced by stocking high levels of inventory for a wide range of products. Additional responsiveness can be gained by stocking products at many locations so as to have the inventory close to customers and available to them immediately. Economies of scale and cost savings can be gotten by stocking inventory in only a few central locations such as regional distribution centers (DCs).3. Location/Warehousing – A location decision that emphasizes responsiveness would be one where a company establishes many locations that are close to its customer base. Efficiency can be achieved by aggregating its inventory to a central location.4. Transportation – Responsiveness can be achieved by a transportation mode that is fast and flexible such as trucks and airplanes. Efficiency can be emphasized by transporting products in larger batches and doing it less often. The use of transportation modes such as ship, railroad, and pipelines can be very efficient.5. Information – The power of this driver grows stronger each year as the technology for collecting and sharing information becomes more wide spread, easier to use, and less expensive. Information, much like money, is a very useful commodity because it can be applied directly to enhance the performance of the other four supply chain drivers. High levels of responsiveness can be achieved when companies collect and share accurate and timely data generated by the operations of the other four drivers.
What is the importance of a supply chain management?
Supply chain management is the basic and most important factor in earning customer satisfaction. The secret weapon to increasing customer satisfaction may lie on your supply chain performance. It can as well help to boost your profitability in the and of every business day, week, month, or year. There has never been any section of a business that can have the effect of the supply chain in improving service levels, reducing retail costs and as well as reaching the client.Importance Of Supply Chain management:Research has proven that an integral and ever-changing section of most businesses is the supply chain management. The supply chain is important for customer satisfaction and the success of any business. Keep reading to discover some amazing and crucial benefits of having a good supply chain management program for your business.Some of the needed metrics:Upgrades in Customer ServiceBoost Financial ConditionLess Operating Costs:(production cost, purchasing cost, total supply chain cost)Tracking Customer Satisfaction Using Special Metricsthese are the some of metrics will help anyone to unveil one of the best tips to business success and development. Since alterations can occur in client satisfaction and experience, connecting changes may also appear. This is one of the amazing secrets that can help your business grow faster than anticipated.To make this secret effective, it is expedient to use your accounting 8, analytic systems to ensure that the total supply chain works for every individual customer. Accessing the troubling areas of your business will help to come with reasonable solutions. Clients will be loyal to you when problem areas of your business are resolved. Directly or indirectly, your business will grow and expand in no time.When all facts are put to the table, you can discover sections of your supply chain creating drastic dissatisfaction to customers. By upgrading your business services, achieving improved profitability is possible, time and time again. Irrespective of your view about customer satisfaction, supply chain management remains the key factor to consider in achieving success.
What is a supply chain?
One of the commonly cited definitions about the nature of the supply chain was given by Martin Christopher, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management in Bedfordshire, England. He suggests that the supply chain is “the network of organizations that are involved, through upstream and downstream linkages, in the different processes and activities that produce value in the form of products and services in the hands of the ultimate consumer”[i]; upstream pointing towards the supplier end of the supply chain, downstream to the customer end. Transportation and logistics companies, manufacturer, supplier, retailers and distributors as well as consumers are all part of the supply chain.In other words the supply chain is the value chain that includes the planning and execution activities and physical, digital and financial flows and processes from the design of a product or service to the disposal or repurposing - entirely or in parts - of the materials used or goods produced.[i] Christopher, Martin and Peck, Helen., ”Building the resilient supply chain”. International Journal of Logistics Management, Cranfield School of Management, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp 1-13, 2004. https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/bitstream/1826/2666/1/Buildingpercent20the percent20resilient percent20supply percent20chain-2003.pdf