The SCM is considered by many experts worldwide as the ultimate solution towards efficient enterprise management. Many management failures have been attributed to the lack of system to bind various sub systems within geographically widespread enterprise, which true to modern trends, also includes umbrella of customers, suppliers and associates. Managers of tomorrow are therefore, expected to raise themselves above the level of perpetual crisis management to one of the proactive, predictive and performance oriented management.
SCM is a set of synchronized decisions and activities utilized to efficiently integrate suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, transporters, retailers, and customers so that the right product or service is distributed at the right quantities, to the right locations, and at the right time, in order to minimize system-wide costs while satisfying customer service level requirements. The objective of SCM is to achieve sustainable competitive Advantage.
A company’s supply chain in an e-Biz environment can be very complicated. Indian economy bears simplified supply chain because many companies have hundreds and thousands of supplies and customers. The supply chain thus in its entirety includes internal supply chain functions, an upstream supplier network, and a downstream distribution network. Logistic function facilitates the physical flow of material from the raw material producer to the manufacturer, to the distributor, and finally, to the end user.
The SCM has many applications in the government environment too. This paper highlights some of the typical applications in the government sector of the SCM paradigm. What is essential in the SCM is to establish operationally feasible link(s) between various key component for achieving overall efficiency and cost trade-off. The use of quantitative methods in SCM is evaluated, embedding of these models in Decision Support System (DSS) have been discussed. The major component of SCM is multi-objective transportation and distribution function for time and cost trade-off. The Multiple Criterion Decision Making (MCDM) model for the component of SCM viz. Transportation and Distribution, system as a DSS have been described in detail – a major backend system of Integrated Supply Chain Management Process (ISCMP).
The current trend toward the globalization of supply chains renders many managers confused as to what globalization really means. Often, the term is little more than a battlefield of semantics, of little value to the individual tasked with managing value creation and cost reduction processes in the movement of goods. Clearly, globalization infers the cross-border movement of goods and the emergence of global competitors and opportunities across competing supply chains within an industry. Managers, however, often question the differences between a global market and a single market, in that many of the same conditions exist in both. Although this may be true, the complexities of cross-border operations are exponentially greater than in a single country, and the ability to compete in the global environment often depends on understanding the subtleties that emerge only in cross border trade—that is, in Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM).
The fierce competition in today’s markets is led by advances in industrial technology, increased globalization of demand and supply sources, tremendous improvements in information availability, plentiful venture capital, and creative business designs. In highly competitive markets, the simple pursuit of market share is no longer sufficient to ensure profitability, and thus, companies focus on redefining their competitive space or profit zone. For example, companies pursue cooperative relationships to capture lifetime customer share (as opposed to mass market share) through systematic development and management of cooperative and collaborative partnerships. Markets have been changed by factors such as power shifts from corporate buyers to end users, the requirement for mass customization, emergence of global consumer segments, time- and quality-based competition, improvements in communications and information technology, increasing knowledge intensity, and changing government policies. Power in a broad spectrum of supply chains has shifted downstream toward the customer or end user, and as a result, customer satisfaction becomes the ultimate goal of a company. As the customer increasingly is in charge in the marketplace, inter firm cooperation is critical to satisfy customers. Manufacturers and their intermediaries must be nimble and quick or face the prospect of losing market share, and thus, relationships and predictable performance become very important in a supply chain.
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