LO1: Understand the relationship between supply chain management (SCM) and organizational business objectives. LO1.

1 Explain the role and importance of logistics in supply chain management in meeting your chosen organizations strategic objectives. In the ancient Greek tale about the tortoise and the hare, the speedy and overconfident rabbit fell asleep on the job, while the "slow and steady" turtle won the race. That may have been true in Aesop's time, but in today's demanding business environment, "slow and steady" won't get you out of the starting gate, let alone win any races. Managers these days identify that getting products to customers faster than the competition will advance a company's competitive position. To remain competitive, companies must get new solutions to significant Supply Chain Management issues such as modal analysis, supply chain management, load planning, route planning and distribution network design. Companies must face corporate challenges that sway Supply Chain Management such as reengineering globalisation and outsourcing. Why is it so significant for companies to get products to their customers rapidly? Faster product availability is central to escalating sales, says R. Michael Donovan of Natick, Mass., a management consultant specialising in manufacturing and information systems. "There's a substantial profit advantage for the extra time that you are in the market and your competitor is not," he says. "If you can be there first, you are likely to get more orders and more market share." The aptitude to convey a product faster also can make or break a sale. "If two alternatives [products] emerge to be equal and one is right away available and the other will be accessible in a week, which would you choose? evidently, "Supply Chain Management has an central role to take part in moving products more speedily to their target. LO1.2 Explain the link between your chosen organizations supply chain management and its business functions. Williams et al. (2002) assured organizational novelty would drive the changes of the whole organizational framework and that of employees, which further affects the operation of the whole supply chain. The mounting needs for the cooperation and the connection between buyers and suppliers would reason strong effects to the organizational innovation (Lee, 1995). AtuaheneGime (1996 a/b) also assured that supply chain management chiefly concentrates on the pluses and value of the product innovation. As for service industry, the returns of innovation in both service and quality are subject to a good supply chain management. Athaide et al. (1996) said that in the happening of both product innovation and technique innovation, the supply. The type of the corporate culture affects the likelihood of the individual innovation and the organizational innovation. The bureaucratic culture restrains the individual innovation and the corporations ability to make any conversion against competition. The supportive culture is

easiest to shore up the individual innovation, and can also make corporations happy to alter for recuperating their competences. The effectual culture can egg on the individual innovation. However, its too much emphasis on results will bring on the opposing conflicts among staff, and becomes a big obstacle for the organizational transformation. Hurley and Hut (1998) said that an organization would give more resources to promote more innovation and build up competences if its culture stresses innovation. LO.1.3What are the key drivers used by your organization to achieve an integrated Supply Chain? As companies increasingly put into action their supply chain to compete and attain market share, spending and action in this area are remarkably on the upswing. Technology and process upgrades at forward-thinking companies evidently demonstrate that supply chain excellence is more broadly established as an element of overall business strategy and that growing value to customers is not just managements, but everyones business. The transfer in how companys outlook their supply chain is taking hold. Scrutinize how your company views its supply chain and deem your answers to these fundamental questions. Does leadership view your supply chain as a strategic competitive advantage? If not, are you bearing in mind outsourcing your supply chain? Are the capacity strengths of your supply chain generally known and understood by leadership of the company? If so, how do they sway growth, profitability and customer service? Hitachi Consulting works closely with leading manufacturing and distribution companies and aids them address their business challenges. From our experience operational with key companies in food and beverage, consumer products, high tech and industrial manufacturing, there are six key trends causing significant impact and modify to supply chain design and performance: Trend 1 Demand planning Trend 2 Globalization Trend 3 Increased competition and price pressures Trend 4 Outsourcing Trend 5 Shortened and more complex product life cycles Trend 6 Closer integration and collaboration with suppliers

LO2: Be able to use information technology to optimise supplier relationships in an organization.

LO2.1 Evaluate the effectiveness of strategies used by your organisation to maintain supplier relationships. Efficient management of suppliers is one of the ways manufacturing companies can advance their performance. There are many significant aspects of supplier management; they incorporate sourcing strategies, and the way relationships are managed and the information exchange policies adopted by manufacturers. Characteristically, it has been argued in the literature that close relationships with suppliers should be urbanized, in contrast to the conventional pricedriven transactional relationship. In concurrence with this approach manufacturers should employ a single sourcing strategy rather than multi-sourcing. The research found that noteworthy portion of the companies surveyed had experienced an alteration in their relationship with suppliers in the last few years. In the main relationships had become closer and the use of partnerships was in proof. Although the companies had developed partnerships with some of their suppliers the majority of firms continued to prefer a multi-sourcing policy. The research results have implications for German manufacturing companies as they point out the potential for development through the greater adoption of best practices in the area of supplier management. LO.2.2What information technology does your organisation use to create strategies in developing relationship with its suppliers? As search costs and other coordination costs turn down, theory predicts that firms should optimally amplify the number of suppliers with which they do business. Despite recent declines in these costs due to information technology, there is little proof of an augment in the number of suppliers used. On the contrary, in many industries, firms are working with fewer suppliers. This suggests that other forces must be accounted for in a more complete model of buyer supplier relationships. As firms try to amplify their performance, the interface with suppliers has become a major point of weight in the quest for additional efficiencies. This topic is enjoying ever-increasing popularity, especially in view of the differences in customer-supplier relationships between Japanese and American firms. For instance, superior supplier relations have been approximate to provide a $300-600 per car cost advantage to Japanese manufacturers. These trends are reflected in the information technology (IT) literature as well, which has recognized the impact of IT on supplier relationships as an important area for research, and has discussed these relationships in an institutional economics framework addressing the implications of firm size and the governance structure of the affiliation. LO 2.3 Identify systems used by your organisation to maintain relationship with its suppliers. A natural approach to determining the optimal number of suppliers is to begin from the assumption that a firm would profit by growing the number of its suppliers, thereby broadening its choice, but that technological considerations constrain this strategy. In this perspective, the

number of suppliers is restricted by considerations such as the cost of setting up a relationship, search costs, and transaction costs, which can commonly be summarized as coordination costs. For example, in trying to determine the optimal number of suppliers for a given input, it may be supposed that suppliers' product offerings are substitutes for one another, except that they differ in some desirable feature, such as price, fit, or product characteristics. Interacting with each supplier entails a coordination cost. After surveying some number of suppliers, the buyer selects the product offering that renders the best value according to its set of criteria. The optimal number of suppliers is determined by trading off the cost of further searches against the expected benefit from identifying a better supplier. To demonstrate these trade-offs, in this section we offer a model for the optimal number of suppliers in the neoclassical tradition of Stigler (1951). For example, Consider a two-period setting with a buyer firm and N risk-neutral potential suppliers with identical production technology facing the same marginal cost, assumed to be zero. Supplier offerings differ in a product characteristic, which, without loss of generality, is assumed to be one-dimensional, providing to the buyer firm utility e distributed in the interval [0,1] according to a known density function. e can be thought of as a "fit" indicator. Suppliers' e can be discovered only after a relationship has been established between the buyer firm and the corresponding supplier. The buyer firm faces an irreversible cost K for each supplier it does business with, which can be thought of as a coordination cost. In the first period, the buyer firm selects n suppliers from the N available suppliers as the suppliers it will do business with. In the second period, the buyer discovers the values of the fit parameters i.e. for the suppliers and purchases from the supplier whose offering provides the "best match" (i.e., the highest e). LO3 Understand the role of information technology in supply chain management. LO3.1 Assess how information technology could assist in the integration of the different parts of the supply chain within your organization. Today companies are often not considered independent entities, but parts of multi-company, multi-echelon networks, i.e. supply chains, delivering goods and services to the final customer (Christopher, 1992; Lambert and Cooper, 2000). Supply chain management (SCM) literature proposes that integrated control of these multi-company networks can provide significant benefits (e.g. Cooper et al., 1997; Burgess, 1998; de Leeuw et al., 1999; Mason-Jones and Towill, 1999; Norek and Pohlen, 2001). The utilization of information technology (IT), in turn, is considered an imperative requirement for managing these networks, and has been associated with noteworthy supply chain efficiency improvements (e.g. Lee and Billington, 1992; White and Pearson, 2001).

LO3.2 Evaluate how information technology has contributed to the management of the supply chain within your organisation. Supply chain management (SCM) is concerned with the flow of products and information between supply chain members' organizations. Recent development in technologies enables the organization to gain information easily in their premises. These technologies are supportive to coordinates the activities to manage the supply chain. The cost of information is decreased due to the escalating rate of technologies. In the integrated supply chain model (Fig.1) bi-directional arrow reflect the accommodation of reverse materials and information feedback flows. Manager needs to comprehend that information technology is more than just computers. Except computer data recognition equipment, communication technologies, factory automation and other hardware and services are incorporated.

Bi-directional arrow reflects the adjustment of reverse materials and information feedback flows. Managers need to comprehend that information technology is more than just computers. Except computer, data recognition equipment, communication technologies, factory automation and other hardware and services are incorporated. LO.3.3 Assess the effectiveness of information technology in managing the supply chain in your organization. Prior to 1980s the information flow between functional areas within an organization and between supply chain members organizations were paper based. The paper based transaction and communication is slow. During this period, information was frequently over looked as a critical competitive resource because its value to supply chain members was not obviously understood. IT infrastructure capabilities give a competitive positioning of business initiatives like cycle time reduction, implementation, implementing redesigned cross-functional processes. Numerous well know firms involved in supply chain relationship through information technology. Three factors have strongly swayed this alteration in the significance of information. First, satisfying in fact satisfying customer has become something of a corporate obsession. Serving the customer in the best, most efficient and effective manner has become critical. Second information is a crucial factor in the managers' abilities to reduce inventory and human resource requirement to a competitive level. Information flows plays a crucial role in strategic planning.

LO4 Understand the role of logistics and procurement in supply chain management. LO4.1 Explain the role of logistics in supply chain management in system in your organization. Both logistics and supply chain management are significant and exciting areas that touch our lives. Just imagine the different products that are bought and consumed by us every day. How do they reach the customer and at what cost? In ancient times, international trade was subjugated by bulky raw materials. Today, in-process and finished products (not raw materials) play a greater role in world trade. Owing to piling up of inventory and carrying cost, hospitals and factories have put in systems in place to arrest unnecessary purchases. Logistics management is that part of SCM that plans, implements and controls the efficient, effective, forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer prerequisites. Logistics involves getting in the right way, the right product, in the right quantity and right quality, in the right place at the right time, for the right customer at the right cost. Getting some of these 'Rs' right may be easy for many, but getting all correct can be quite a challenge. For example, in both retail distribution and in high-value manufacturing, it is now quite common to offer suppliers quite specific and narrow time windows within which to deliver freight. LO4.2 Evaluate any procurement practices in your organization. Worldwide competitive pressures necessitate greater contribution from the purchasing and supply management functions, procurement practices and suppliers to improve the organizations relative position on quality, price, technology, and responsivenessthat doesnt mean sitting around and waiting for it to happen! Here are some fascinating general observations based upon recent purchasing analysis:

Each day, buyers spend hundreds of millions of dollars which can account for anywhere from 20-70% of an organizations revenue, budget, or sales dollar. An analysis of payments has shown that, in most companies, 50-60% of the numbers of checks to vendors are of payments of less than $500. These payments often represent less than 5% of the annual material expenditures. The payments under $1,000 represent the disbursements and approximately 10% of the dollars.

LO4.3 What are some of the factors that must be considered when improving logistics and procurement practices in your organisation?

LO4.3 What are some of the factors that must be considered when improving logistics and procurement practices in your organisation? Procurement is a key activity in the supply chain. It can considerably influence the overall achievement of an emergency response depending on how it is managed. In supply chains, procurement grabs a very large proportion of the total spend and should be managed effectively to achieve optimal value. It serves three levels of users: 1. The internal customer. 2. Programs in response to emergencies and ongoing programs. 3. Propositioning of stocks, for both internal customers and program needs. Some of the factors that should be considered to improve logistics and procurement practices could be: o Establishment of supply chain management council: A council's purpose is to give direction and help align supply chain strategy with the company's overall strategy. o Proper alignment and staff the supply chain organization o Use of technology o Establishment of alliances with key suppliers o Engage in mutual strategic sourcing o Focus on total cost of ownership, not price o Optimize company-owned inventory o Establishment of appropriate levels of control and minimize risk LO5

In your different groups

LO5.1 Plan a strategy to improve an organizations supply chain. This strategy (as is shown in diagram) was devised using a multi-tiered approach. The Department brought together subject matter experts from component agencies and divisions including the USCG, CBP, TSA, DHS Policy, Science and Technology, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, Grants and Training, and Preparedness to make an initial draft of the strategy. This draft was then subjected to an extensive review process involving internal staff across the Department, interagency reviews with non-DHS agencies, consultation with the private sector through advisory committees, including: the National Maritime Security Advisory Committee

and the Commercial Operations Advisory Committee, and consultation with international trade partners, principally selected by volume of trade with the United States (e.g., APEC). After a final round of corrections, taking into account the recommendations and requests of the reviewers and consultants, the strategy subject to a formal review by DHS components and submitted for formal Department review. Following initial release, further consultation in developing the final strategy is expected with: The private sector through formal trade organizations (e.g., the World Shipping Council and Port Authorities, including coastal and inland ports). State and local stakeholders. International organizations, including the IMO, the WCO, the International Labor Organization, and the International Organization for Standardization.

LO5.2 Assess how a supply chain improvement strategy will benefit overall business performance in the organization. Supply chain improvement strategy can help in the following ways:

1. Improved Supply: Supply chain management software provides inclusive, 360-degree visibility across the entire supply chain network. It allows users to track the status of all activities across all suppliers, production plants, storage facilities, and distribution centers. 2. Minimum Delays: Many supply chains are overwhelmed by delays that can result in poor relationships and lost business. With supply chain management software, all activities can be flawlessly synchronized and executed from start to end, ensuring much higher levels of on-time delivery across the board. 3. Improved Collaboration: This type of direct, unrestricted communication and datasharing helps to keep all key stakeholders informed, so that supply chain processes can run as smoothly as possible. 4. Reduced Costs: Supply Chain Management software can help reduce overhead expenses in lot many ways. LO5.3 Explain how barriers will be overcome in the organisation when implementing a supply chain improvement strategy. Businesses require effective tools for supply chain management. The supply chain is generally unpredictable and always dynamic, and ineffective supply chain management means poor business performance. Conventional software solutions to the supply chain management problem have proved reasonably effective, but they have been incapable to render data visible, manageable and handy. Some renowned IT companies provides an integrated software application that enables supply chain managers to identify and remedy issues effectively and efficiently, keeping information organized and at hand. Companies can use such solutions to connect supply chain data to other enterprise applications, including finance, HR, CRM, and external data. In this way, they can not only improve the performance of a supply chain, but integrates an entire company into a single source of missioncritical information, effectively increasing not only performance, but the value of existing IT resources.

References
1. Burgess, R. (1998), Avoiding supply chain management failure: lessons from business process re-engineering, International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 15-23. 2. Kanji, G. K. (Ed.). (1995). Total quality management proceedings of the

first world congress. Boundary Row, London: Chapman & Hall. 3. Kanter, R. M. (1989). When Giants Learn to Dance. (W. D. Hitt, comp.) New York: Simon and Schuster. 4. Sink, D. S. (1985, January). Strategic planning: A crucial step toward a successful productivity management program. IE, 52-60. 5. Sink, D. S., Morris, W. T., & Johnston, C. S. (1995) By What Method? Norcross, GA: Institute of Industrial Engineers. 6. Ala-Risku, T., Krkkinen, M. and Holmstrm, J. (2003), Evaluating the applicability of merge-in-transit: A step by step process for supply chain managers, International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 67-81.