Supply Chain Management (SCM)

What's Supply Chain Management?

At some point in your life someone has asked you this very important question: 'What's for dinner?' There must be a million possible answers to that question. Pizza? Tacos? Lamb chops? No matter what your answer is, none of these foods will just appear out of nowhere. They have to first move from their original raw state into the packaged products you buy in the store. In other words, they have to go along a supply chain.

In fact, everything you've ever purchased has been available to you because it was a part of a supply chain. A supply chain is the network of businesses and people that work together to move raw materials into finished goods and eventually to the end-user. The supply chain is directly or indirectly responsible for fulfilling your needs.

Supply chain management (SCM) is the active integration and coordination of all supply chain activities to provide you, the customer, with the best value. Providing you with the best value means providing you with a quality product for a reasonable price. Companies are able to provide customer value by coordinating the efforts of every activity involved in their supply chains internally as well as externally among supply chain members.

How a Supply Chain Works

Believe it or not, the supply chain starts with you. Let's imagine, for instance, that you love shoes. Your desire to acquire shoes sets off a chain reaction. You either go to the store or shop online to get the shoes you want. The retailer obtains the shoes from the distributor. The distributor gets the shoes from the manufacturer. The manufacturer gets the raw material from someone else. So all these people, businesses, and processes are linked together. They are part of a supply chain that begins with you.

There is a constant flow of information, money, and products throughout the supply chain. This information, money, and products can be likened to the lubricant used to protect gears. Without the lubricant as protection, gears cease to function properly. The same is true for a supply chain; without information, money, or products acting as lubrication for its gears, a supply chain ceases to function properly.

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