GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Global Supply Chain Management

Global Supply Chain Management

Introduction

In the last two decades, the Supply Chain Management has gained increasing importance in the overall management of the companies. Initially, efforts focused on aligning the goals of the various departments within companies so that thereby, if it could achieve the optimisation of available resources. In this perspective, for example, was one of the developments of the integration and harmonisation of business processes in the Sales department. In practice, the production began to reduce the size of lots of manufacturing and producing a greater number of differentiated products in a shorter time (Hugos, 2011). As a result, companies can reduce the cost of ownership of stock and simultaneously increase the level of customer service and sales volume.

Researchers in the early 90's claimed that management of supply chain is the most important for creating value in the companies as it is resulted from the ability to integrate their business processes with the other members of the supply chain because it was there that he was a real advantage competitive (Monczka et al., 2008). This new way of looking at value creation promoted a second evolutionary stage where it showed the advantages of expanding the integration of business processes within the company by other members of the Supply Chain (Wisner, 2011). However, in order to address this competition, the ability to optimise the Supply Chain Management has proved to be crucial for the proper performance of companies and even, in some cases, to ensure their survival. In fact, the importance of Supply Chain Management is today widely documented in numerous cases and academic studies.

Discussion

Logistics nowadays has shown a constant evolution, remains one of the key elements in the company's competitive strategy. At first it was confused with the transport and storage of products. Today is the crux of the integrated supply chain, working in close harmony with the modern management of the supply chain management. It handles all movement and storage activities that facilitate the flow of products from the point of acquisition of raw materials to the point of final consumption, including thinking up the path within the company as well as the information flows that put moving products, in order to provide adequate levels of service to customers at a reasonable cost. The management of logistics and information flow across the chain allows executives to assess strengths and weaknesses in your supply chain, helping to make decisions that result in reduced costs, increased quality, among others, increasing product competitiveness and/ or creating value and differences in relation to competition (Gopalakrishnan et al., 2012).

In fact, through the information obtained about the supply chain, it is possible to devise strategies that bring competitive advantage which is nothing more than when the company performs one or more of its activities in a special way to bring a differentiation to its competitors. The quest for survival and growth in a highly competitive and globalised has required companies to identify, implement and sustain their competitive ...