Centre for Strategy and Performance

Supply Chain Management

1. On the operational and tactical level, Supply Chain Management is the effort towards the integration of business processes across firm boundaries that goes beyond logistics and includes areas such as quality management or new product development. Issues here are the use and integration of modern information technology in the supply chain, process-reengineering, supplier selection and development, relationship management, joint product development, new product introduction and marketing etc. The emphasis is on operational efficiency in the supply chain.
2. On a more strategic level, the term Supply Chain Management is connected to notions such as "value chain", "supply network" and "extended enterprise". The Supply Chain Management paradigm leads managers to re-think their current business models, to look upstream and downstream their supply chain, and then take a further step back and look at the supply network as a whole to:

• analyse how their company, products and business processes fit in the overall supply network,
• compare their supply network with competing networks,
• analyse future threats and opportunities such as stemming from changing routes to markets, dynamics of power and dependence in the supply network, loss and development of competences within the supply network etc

Links:

• www.supply-chain.org
  The Supply-Chain Council was formed in 1996 by individuals representing companies including AMR Research , Bayer, Compaq Computer, Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath (PRTM), Procter & Gamble, etc. It developed a well accepted supply chain operations reference model: SCOR.

Papers/Books:

• Bechtel, C. & Jayaram, J. (1997) "Supply Chain Management – A Strategic Perspective", International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol.8, No.1, pp.15-34.
• Hines, P., Lamming, R., Jones, D., Cousins, P., Rich, N. (2000) "Value Stream Management – Strategy and Excellence in the Supply Chain", FT Prentice Hall, London.
• Mills, J. & Schmitz, J. (2002) "A Strategic Review of Supply Networks", Working Paper, Centre for Strategy and Performance, University of Cambridge.

by Johannes Schmitz, < js340eng.cam.ac.uk>