Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management

A supply chain consists of all those parties involved directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of a request from a client. The supply chain includes not only the manufacturer and supplier, but also transporters, warehouses, retailers (or retail) and even to the same customers. Within each organization, as the manufacturer, covers all functions involved in receiving and fulfilling a request. These functions include, but are not limited to new product development, marketing, operations, distribution, finance and customer service (Hameri and Palsson, 2003).

A supply chain is a network of firms connected by upstream and downstream linkages and engaged in the activities that produce value in the form of products and services at the final customer's disposition. For individual firms, the importance of considering the supply chain's perspective lies in the fact that, in nowadays business environment, competition is not among organizations but among supply chains. In this sense, supply chain management is generally associated with managing the procurement channel across the boundaries of enterprises, such as between firms and their suppliers. In this type of relationships, buyers have different options to manage their sourcing relationships (Ballou, 2004).

Although supply chain management, i.e. a proactive management orientation toward the whole supply chain, could represent the maximum level of operational efficacy, it also demands to the buyer an often unattainable level of involvement, investments, transaction costs, competencies and power. This makes other options like supplier development, where the buyer adopts a proactive management style with the first-tier supplier, a more feasible way for buyers to improve supplying operations. Analyzing the inter-organizational interface of supply chain firms is therefore one of the alternative ways of drawing conclusions about supply chains.

This can be done by investing in knowledge-sharing routines by using behaviour instead of output control, and by promoting self-enforcement mechanisms of governance ...