Publisher's Synopsis
Supply chain management is an approach to integrating suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers, such that products are produced and distributed at the right quantities, to the right location, at the right time, with the mutual goals of minimizing system wide costs and satisfying customer service requirements. In other words, supply chain management synchronizes a firm's processes with its suppliers and customers with the goal of matching the materials, services and information with customer demand. Critical supply chain processes include product design, production, and delivery, support, and supplier-customer relationships. To succeed in today's environment, managers need to integrate their goals effectively to compete in the dynamic, global economy and focus on the final customer as the driver for improvements. Supply chains compete based upon cost, quality, time and responsiveness. Supply chain improvement tools include, but are not limited to process improvement tools of flow charting, flow diagrams, service blueprints, process analysis, process re-engineering, link charts, multi-activity analysis, backward chaining, and Gantt charts. Supply Chain Management Pathways for Research and Practice attempts to compile a selection of research papers focusing on a wide range of problems in the supply chain domain. Each chapter provides important comprehensions into understanding these problems along with approaches to attaining effective solutions. The Supply Chain Management (SCM) paradigm is widely discussed today in virtually all industry sectors. This paradigm emerged in the late 1980s, and became widespread in the 1990s as a way to organize a set of concepts, methods and tools for promoting a holistic view of the entire supply chain. Supply chain optimization greatly depends on the planning process. This process aims to obtain a balance between supply and demand, from primary suppliers to final customers, to deliver superior goods and services through the optimization of supply chain assets. This is quite a difficult task since it involves simultaneously synchronizing a large quantity of complex decisions, and dealing with other issues that can complicate the process, for instance the existence of conflicting objectives and the presence of stochastic behaviors. A quality improvement leading to a reduction in defective units, and therefore a reduction in rework, has a positive impact upon the supply chain as cycle times are reduced, schedules are met and customer response times improve. Fewer defective units in the system allow the remaining units to move through the supply chain faster, which is noted by improved cycle times. Today's companies are forced into functioning in a challenging business world with extensive uncertainties. Frontrunners turn out to be those companies that are able to foresee the market swings and react swiftly with minimal adjustment costs and effective response strategies. Hence, developing flexibility in adapting to sudden changes in global markets, resource availabilities, and outbreaks of financial and political crises becomes an integral part of effective management strategy. Supply chain management presents an especially important domain where such flexibility is critical to achieving a consistently successful performance.
