Supply chain management

About: Supply chain management is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 39055 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1082949 citations. The topic is also known as: SCM.

Supply chain strategy : the logistics of supply chain management

Abstract: This book provides high-tech and high-touch logistics solutions for supply chain challenges. In today's fast-paced and customer-oriented business environment, superior supply chain performance is a prerequisite to getting and staying competitive. "Supply Chain Strategy" is based on world-class logistics practices in place in successful supply chain organizations, the latest academic breakthroughs in logistics system design, and the logic of logistics. It presents the proven pillars of success in logistics and supply chain management. Part of McGraw-Hill's "Logistics Management Library", "Supply Chain Strategy" is organized according to author Dr. Ed Frazelle's breakthrough logistics master planning methodology. The methodology leads to metrics, process designs, system designs, and organizational strategies for total supply chain management, total logistics management, customer response, inventory planning and management, supply, transportation, and warehousing.Concise yet complete, Dr. Frazelle's book shows how to develop a comprehensive logistics and supply chain strategy, one that will both complement and support a company's strategic objectives and long-term success. Logistics - the flow of material, information, and money between consumers and suppliers - has become a key boardroom topic. It is the subject of cover features in business publications from "Wall Street Journal" to "BusinessWeek". Annual global logistics expenditures exceed $3.5 trillion, nearly 20 percent of the world's GDP, making logistics perhaps the last frontier for major corporations to significantly increase shareholder and customer value. And at the heart of every effort to improve organizational logistics performance? Supply chain efficiency. "Supply Chain Strategy" is today's most comprehensive resource for up-to-the-minute thinking and practices on developing supply chain strategies that support a company's overall objectives.Covering world-class practices and systems, taken from the files of Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, General Electric, and other companies, it covers essential supply chain subjects including: logistics data mining - for identifying the root cause of material and information flow problems, pinpointing opportunities for process improvements, and providing an objective basis for project-team decision making; and, inventory planning and management - presenting metrics, processes, and systems for forecasting, demand planning, and inventory control, yielding lower inventory levels and improved customer service. It also covers: logistics information systems and Web-based logistics - helping to substitute information for inventory and work content; transportation and distribution - for connecting sourcing locations with customers at the lowest cost by, among other things, leveraging private and third-party transportation systems; and, logistics organization development - including the seven disciplines that link enterprises across the supply chain, as well as logistics activities within those enterprises."Supply Chain Strategy" explains and demonstrates how decision makers can use today's technology to enhance key logistics systems at every point in the supply chain, from the time an idea or product is conceived through its delivery to the final user. It describes the major steps in developing an effective, workable logistics management program - one that will reduce operating expenses, minimize capital investment, and improve overall customer service and satisfaction.

Fast, global, and entrepreneurial: supply chain management, Hong Kong style. An interview with Victor Fung. Interview by Joan Magretta.

Abstract: Li & Fung, Hong Kong's largest export trading company, has been an innovator in supply chain management--a topic of increasing importance to many senior executives. In this interview, chairman Victor Fung explains both the philosophy behind supply chain management and the specific practices that Li & Fung has developed to reduce costs and lead times, allowing its customers to buy \"closer to the market.\" Li & Fung has been a pioneer in \"dispersed manufacturing.\" It performs the higher-value-added tasks such as design and quality control in Hong Kong, and outsources the lower-value-added tasks to the best possible locations around the world. The result is something new: a truly global product. To produce a garment, for example, the company might purchase yarn from Korea that will be woven and dyed in Taiwan, then shipped to Thailand for final assembly, where it will be matched with zippers from a Japanese company. For every order, the goal is to customize the value chain to meet the customer's specific needs. To be run effectively, Victor Fung maintains, trading companies have to be small and entrepreneurial. He describes the organizational approaches that keep the company that way despite its growing size and geographic scope: its organization around small, customer-focused units; its incentives and compensation structure; and its use of venture capital as a vehicle for business development. As Asia's economic crisis continues, chairman Fung sees a new model of companies emerging--companies that are, like Li & Fung, narrowly focused and professionally managed.

A modeling framework for supply chain simulation: opportunities for improved decision-making

Abstract: Owing to its inherent modeling flexibility, simulation is often regarded as the proper means for supporting decision making on supply chain design. The ultimate success of supply chain simulation, however, is determined by a combination of the analyst's skills, the chain members' involvement, and the modeling capabilities of the simulation tool. This combination should provide the basis for a realistic simulation model, which is both transparent and complete. The need for transparency is especially strong for supply chains as they involve (semi)autonomous parties each having their own objectives. Mutual trust and model effectiveness are strongly influenced by the degree of completeness of each party's insight into the key decision variables. Ideally, visual interactive simulation models present an important communicative means for realizing the required overview and insight. Unfortunately, most models strongly focus on physical transactions, leaving key decision variables implicit for some or all of the parties involved. This especially applies to control structures, that is, the managers or systems responsible for control, their activities and their mutual attuning of these activities. Control elements are, for example, dispersed over the model, are not visualized, or form part of the time-indexed scheduling of events. In this article, we propose an alternative approach that explicitly addresses the modeling of control structures. First, we will conduct a literature survey with the aim of listing simulation model qualities essential for supporting successful decision making on supply chain design. Next, we use this insight to define an object-oriented modeling framework that facilitates supply chain simulation in a more realistic manner. This framework is meant to contribute to improved decision making in terms of recognizing and understanding opportunities for improved supply chain design. Finally, the use of the framework is illustrated by a case example concerning a supply chain for chilled salads.