¶ … Supply Chain Management
Of the many processes, systems and platforms in any company, its supply chain is the most critical for continually meeting customer expectations and delivering high quality products and services. Managing supply chains so they are demand-driven and meet and exceed customer expectations is essential if a business is going succeed over the long-term and earn trust through continual, predictable execution to customer requirements (Ellinger, Shin, Northington, et.al. 2012). The challenge however is that supply chains are often very complex, multiple layers deep, requiring an intensive amount of effort to keep coordinated and synchronized while also staying aligned with rapidly changing product requirements over time. Adding in the need to launch new products quickly to attain revenue growth, and the full complexity of supply chain management becomes clear. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the pros and cons of integrating a supply chain and specifically evaluate how companies are managing the inevitable conflicts between time, cost and scope to ensure a consistently high level of supply chain performance and quality products being produced. The highest performing supply chains are able to transform information and insight into intelligence that is immediately used to accelerate and streamline supply chain performance (Kogut, 2000). The Toyota Production System is a case in point, which relies on an advanced series of processes for interpreting supply chain performance and create plans and programs that compensate for variations in customer demands and the ability of suppliers to react accordingly (Shook, 2009). The second section of this analysis concentrates on the top ten supply chain innovations of all time as mentioned in the Supply Chain Digest video. The unifying threads of these ten innovations are analyzed with emphasis of what they mean to the future of supply chain management.
Pros and Cons of Integrating a Supply Chain
The following table compares the pros and cons of integrating a supply chain. Reducing costs, complexity, managing the constraints of project- and make-to-stock manufacturing more effectively, in addition to increasing the speed of the new product development and launch process are just a few of the pros or advantages of integrating a supply chain. What unifies the many advantages of integrating a supply chain is the ability to be more customer-centric and driven not by internal forecasts ore a myopic view of cost reduction but more of how to attain greater customer responsiveness, meeting and exceeding their expectations in the process (Ellinger, Shin, Northington, et.al. 2012). Research firm AMR Researched defined the many factors that contribute to a more customer-centric and demand driven supply network as the formation of a Demand Driven Supply Network (DDSN) (Friscia, 2005). Central to the DDSN concept is the unification of all aspects of a supply chain to the common goal of meeting cus9otmers' demands in a timely, completely and most importantly, accurate and cost-effective manner. The DDSN has since been used as a framework for quantifying just how much an integrated supply chain can deliver in terms of economic value to an enterprise. The Hierarchy of Supply Chain Metrics, an entire taxonomy of supply chain metrics defined by AMR Research (Hofman, 2004), is discussed in the second half of this analysis. One of the most significant findings from the AMR Research studies of the DDSN concept was how an integrated supply chain creates knowledge over time, and this knowledge becomes the fuel for even greater levels of competitive differentiation and value over time. The well-known study of the Toyota Production System by Dyer and Nobeoka (2000) illustrates how Toyota shows how the auto maker continues to succeed in transforming information and intelligence into a competitive advantage by increasing speed and accuracy of production expense (Shook, 2009). Dyer and Nobeoka noted that information and intelligence became more valuable that cash as a means for suppliers to coordinate with each other in the TPS framework (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). With so many advantages to integrating a supply chain, it's understandable that enterprises continue to seek out expertise in this area to increase process, product and project performance across their enterprises.
Table: Pros and Cons of Integrating a Supply Chain
Pros
Cons
Greater responsiveness to customers including the ability to better predict when a customized order will be shipped (Ellinger, Shin, Northington, et.al. 2012).
Costs of an integrated supply chain can become excessive if the underlying assumptions regarding its structure and approach are not well-defined to begin with. A faulty or badly designed framework will actually make a supply chain even more ineffective and inefficient than it had been prior to be automated (Abu-Suleiman, Boardman, Priest, 2004).
Greater supplier collaboration and reduction in new product introduction timelines, leading to greater revenue generation over time (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000).
Supply chains that are integrated...
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