Supply Chain Management

Most of our assignments in this course revolve around supply chain management. Techtarget.com defines supply chain management (SCM) as the oversight of materials, information, and finances as they move in a process from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer. This reflection paper will address supply chain process.

A perfect supply chain seeks to match supply and demand and do this with minimal inventory. Supply chain management is a mixture of art and sciences that goes into improving the way an organization finds raw materials it takes to make their product / service and then deliver it to their customer. The idea behind supply chain management is to cut operating costs and improve areas in their process to create financial gains. By utilizing the supply chain management process an organization can limit risks in the supply chain and allows the organization to run a more efficient or lean operation.

There are many aspects of enhancing the supply chain such as; communicating with suppliers to aid in reducing shortfalls, finding ways to source products to strike a balance between low material costs and transportation, implementing just-in-time techniques to improve the manufacturing flow, vehicle routing analysis, strategically placing factories and warehouses, and other traditional logistics measures to create efficiency of distribution of goods / services. If these aspects can be managed properly they can enhance an organizations supply chain.

Other processes that will enhance the supply chain are the inventory process, planning process, implementation process, and the transportation process. These processes can aid organizations from start to finish with their product or service.

The inventory process deals with the organizations on hand inventory and the materials that it will need to operate efficiently. Some organization’s supply chain management utilize just-in-time inventory. With just-in-time process items are...