SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Retail Supply Chain Management Module

Retail Supply Chain Management Module

Critically discuss the supply chain options for a major UK supermarket that might consider sourcing fresh fruit and vegetables that are produced by the Sunveg Group.

The supply chain management (or SCM, abbreviation of ' English supply chain management) covers various activities logistics of companies, with the aim of monitoring the performance and improve efficiency. Among these activities are included in the systematic cataloging of products and strategic coordination of the various members of the supply chain (Lavassani, Movahedi, et al, 2009, p. 85-98). The environment in which businesses operate has changed profoundly, and with it the organization has undergone a profound evolution. Over time, in fact, there has been a gradual shift of control of the market from product to customer and end consumers. It is now established the need to monitor, anticipate and control the phenomena of sale, providing the evolution of consumption and market trends (Mentzer, 2001, p. 1-25). The Supply Chain Management recognizes that the limited integration within the company is no longer sufficient. Today it has become necessary and essential to involve also the network of businesses that are located upstream and downstream processes and activities that produce value in terms of products and services to the final. Businesses can no longer be seen as a single drive configurations-but as constellations of firms in the classical form with a net of interrelated to other nodes (relations between businesses and customers), via extranets (networks that connects the enterprise with external entities), intranet ( internal network company employees) and Internet (computer network connected computers worldwide), in the complex manufacturing operations and sales with the aim of reaching the "focus" of corporate activity that is to meet the needs of the customer ( satisfaction ).

To be involved is the company as a whole and all the individual areas, from marketing to the control, but a role is still covered by the chain of logistics. This has always been attributed to secondary importance, but has now been re-evaluated, thanks to the emergence of the Internet and new ways of exchanging goods and services flow from it (Simchi-Levi, Kaminsky, et al, 2007, p. 59). The logistics for any type of business, whether small, medium or large, has assumed significance in recent years a crucial strategic even in outline, contributing significantly to increasing the profitability of the entire "business process" business (Simchi-Levi, Kaminsky, et al, 2007, p. 59).

To understand and properly evaluate the price of fruits and vegetables, consumers should be aware that the passage "from farm to fork" is not as simple as it seems at first. Several of the actors who are part of the chain supply play a key role in enabling consumers to have available a wide variety of fresh, flavorful fruits and vegetables, with the best possible quality, and available anytime, anywhere. Moreover, in that it is fresh and perishable products, the industry strives to make the supply chain as short as possible and only as long as ...