Supply Chain Management
1,000–1,200 words Details: Weekly tasks or assignments (Individual or Group Projects) will be due by Monday and late submissions will be assigned a late penalty in accordance with the late penalty policy found in the syllabus. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time. The warehouse manager thought your presentation on operations management was extremely valuable to the company. He now wants to shift the conversation to focus on his warehouse department. You told him a little about supply chain design and how it could improve inventory management. He is interested in hearing more about supply chain design and wants his department staff to also be aware of this valuable resource. He has asked you to create a memo that will be sent out to everyone in his department. Draft a memo of 1,000–1,200 words explaining to your warehouse managers how effective supply chain design could help to enhance profitability and stakeholder value for the company, including the following: Provide an analysis of the behaviors of supply chain networks and supply chain drivers in your memo. Explain how supply chain impacts distribution of assets and resources. The memo should include a visual representation of an example supply chain network using the “Shape” or SmartArt” option in MS Word.
Name:
Institution:
Date:
Internal Memo
To: The Ware House Managers.
From: Student’s Name
Cc: Production Manager
Date: 31St May, 2014
Topic: Supply Chain Design.
Supply chain design is the current management trend in the market employed to achieve competitive advantage. The company intends to introduce a supply chain design at all levels including where houses. This memo is to provide a brief description of supply chain and its benefits.
Supply Chain
A supply chain is an integrated business process involving the working together of different business entities (suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers) to acquire raw materials, convert raw materials into the final product, and deliver the final products to retailers. At the highest level, supply chain design comprised of two basic integrated processes: production planning and inventory control processes and the distribution and logistics processes.
Production planning and inventory control processes comprise of sub-processes involved in production manufacturing and storage including their interfaces. It describes the design and management of the whole process of manufacturing that includes scheduling and acquiring or raw materials, design and scheduling of the manufacturing process, and the design and control of handling materials. While the control of inventory describes the storage policies and procedures design and management, inventories of work-in-process, and the final products.
Distribution and logistics process determines the means by which retrieval and transportation of products from storage to retailers shall be done. The products may be directly transported or first moved to distribution facilities who the transport to retailers and includes managing retrieval of inventories, transportation, and final delivery of the product.
Supply Design and Chain and Profitability
From supply chain segmentation inherent in modern supply chain design, one-to-one relationships between customers and the supply chain are created. Supply chain segmentation involves the creation of profitable relationships with its customers and the supply chain. Segmentation helps the organization define the products and segment customers based on their consumer behaviors rather than the traditional approaches of marketing or finance classifications.
In addition, segmentation also addresses some of the organizations biggest problems that affect its profitability. For example, demand variability where properly structured segmentation for customers and products reduces this variability. Moreover, segmentation allows for the simultaneous provision of high levels of responsiveness and efficiency which maximizes sales and profits for the organization. This maximization is achievable if the organization if products in a certain portfolio are supplied to their customers through an efficient supply chain and other products supplied through a responsive supply chain. This involves the creation of a segment of standard or predictable products and another of the unpredictable products each having separate forecasting and stocking policies.
Segmentation in supply chain design allows managers to customize their service agreements with customers that increase sales and reduces operating costs including fixed and inventory assets through the alignment of supply chain policies to the customer’s value proposition and the company’s value proposition. These value propositions include price, quantity, delivery times, degree of flexibility, and service-level agreements for the customer or product relationship. This is through policies for promising, fulfillment, transportation, inventory, mode of manufacturing, and sourcing. Therefore, the virtual supply chains that run against the single physical supply chain. Therefore, the portfolio of products, customers, channels, suppliers, and supply modes are matched by the best way at a given time to serve every customer reliably and profitably creates a lot of value (profitability) for the organization.
Supply Chain Design and Stakeholder Value
Increasing the total value for a company and for the supply chain has been the concern for managers. Creating value for stakeholders (customers, community, shareholders, employees and suppliers) within the supply chain determines the competitive advantage over its customers. An evaluation of the performance of the supply chain through value conception is necessary towards improving value creation during the supply chain process and increasing stakeholders’ satisfaction. Supply chain incorporates all stake...