In any business or organization, all functions are interlinked and connected to each other and are often overlapping.

Some key aspects like supply chain management, logistics and inventory form the backbone of the business delivery function. Therefore these functions are extremely important to marketing managers as well as finance controllers.

INVENTORY: Inventory refers to all commodities that are consumed in process of manufacture. It is defined as anything that can be stored, stacked and stockpiled. The term inventory is used to cover the stocks of raw materials, components, work-in-progress and finished goods. It is not necessary that an organisation has all these inventory classes. But whatever may be the inventory items, they need efficient management as, generally a significant share of its fund is invested in them. Inventory management is a very important function that determines the health of the supply chain as well as it impacts the financial health of an organisation. Every organisation constantly strives to maintain optimum inventory to be able to meet its requirements and avoid over or under inventory that can impact the financial figures. Inventory is always dynamic. Inventory management requires constant and careful evaluation of external and internal factors and control through planning and review. An efficient inventory management will mean carrying balanced inventory and functioning at optimum efficiency as well as ensuring control over inventory carrying costs. Any increase in efficiency of inventory holding or operations impacts bottom line directly. D.S. Polypack Industries maintains buffer inventory stock as a protection against the uncertainties of demand and supply. The organisation depends on only 2 suppliers to fulfill the requirement of their raw material. The replenishment lead time of the firm is 15 days which means that the interval between the time the firm places an order for raw materials and the time it receives those materials is 15 days. The order for the inventory is placed at the gap of 15 days. It maintains minimum level of inventory which is required for 15 days production and maintains maximum level of stock which is required for 1 month. It may be because as already mentioned lead time is 15 days and also the organisation gives order every after 15 days, to avoid shortage of inventory and to continue production smoothly without any problem. It maintains the amount of inventory in the godown which is required for 15 days production to fulfill the demand of the

market. Again keeping in mind the uncertainties and unpredictable events that might cause to actual delivery time more than the average it maintains maximum level of inventory equal to the amount of inventory required for the production for 1 month. The organisation do not calculate economic order quantity instead places the order according to the demand of the market but it mainly focuses on the purchasing cost and the carrying cost while placing an order as it has only two suppliers on which they totally depends for the supply of raw materials. They store their inventories in their own godowns so they dont need to pay any rent for it but they have to incur maintenance cost for the proper storage of their inventory so that damage or spoilage of the inventories can be avoided. MARKETING IN SUPPLY CHAIN: The marketing concept has a strong influence on the management of a firm, an inter-firm relationship and supply chain. According to AMA, marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals. Market orientation is the implementation of the marketing concept which is composed of three sets of organisation-wide activities which are market intelligence generation, dissemination and managerial action. Market orientation plays a pivotal role in implementing supply chain management. It produces and stores valuable market information that is needed in the process of building, maintaining and enhancing supply chain relationship. A market orientation is used both inside and outside a firm to reorganize and respond to customers needs and to obtain experience, knowledge etc from outside the firm which are not available to the competitors. Market orientation helps supply chain management to achieve its objectives like efficiency and effectiveness. Relationship marketing helps in attracting, maintaining and enhancing customer relationship. It promotes the implementation of supply chain management by reinforcing close inter-firm relationship and inter-firm cooperation and restructures the organizational system into boundary less organisation. Effective and successful supply chain management requires partners to build and maintain close relationships which can be made possible by going for relationship marketing.

D.S.Polypack Industries maintains a good business relationship with their supply chain partners. As there are very limited suppliers to fulfill their raw materials requirement they are bound to maintain long term relationship with them. To generate market information they gather feedbacks from their customers i.e. the distributors to whom they supply their finished products about the demand of their products in the market. Through relationship marketing the firm is able to maintain a strong relation with their suppliers and customers. The suppliers provide them raw materials in time and if there is any type of problem in supplying the goods or delay in sending the goods the suppliers inform them about the problem so that any sort of misunderstanding can be avoided. On the other side they try to maintain close relations with their customers by fulfilling their expectations by providing them goods in time and offering discounts and schemes time to time especially in the festive seasons as a result of which the customers clear their dues in timely manner. They personally visit their customers where possible or make phone calls to their customers who are in far flung areas to communicate with them to know their needs and according produce their goods to fulfill their needs efficiently. PRODUCTION IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: Production is a very crucial and essential part of supply chain of any organisation. To understand the role of production in the supply chain, it is useful to first look at the precursors-namely intrafirm and interfirm production. In intrafirm production the firms would take raw materials and manufacture a product entirely within the firm and in interfirm production the companies have the choice to either vertically integrate and own every step of the process or to rely on other firms to become suppliers. As companies start to consider production process outside the firm, the importance of suppliers in the production process increases. Today organizations are looking for opportunities to improve their efficiencies and reduce cost without having negative effect on customer service levels. Production and supply chain can help to reduce cost by connecting every unit in the supply chain, forecasting collaboration among supply chain partners and offering visibility into the demand and supply side of the chain. Production and supply chain management involves a number of factors like inventory, transportation, warehousing etc through which acquired raw materials are converted into finished goods for sale to customers. In turn, these factors involve several processes that offer

opportunities for cost reduction. Cost reduction requires timely and improved decision-making for common processes under each factor. Following is the manufacturing process D.S Polypack Industries:Firstly the raw material is used for making sheets through the machine called Sheet Line Machine. After making of the sheets/roll, these sheets are used for making finished products in the machine called thermoforming machine where various types of products produced i.e disposal plastic plates and glasses. After production the finished goods i.e. the various types of disposable products (plastic glass & plate) are packed in a box called corrugated box. And then it distributed. FINANCIAL ISSUES IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: In the world of cut throat competition with limited resources, the common problem that every organisation is facing is how to allocate the resources required in the most effective and efficient manner to get the optimum result. The Financial Management group is a critical part of the management team of any company. They are even more important when financial resources are tight and capital allocations are difficult. That is why the finance team needs to be fully engaged and involved in the decision-making process of the business, its long term strategy and the implementation of the strategy. Finance team plays a very significant role in the supply chain of an organisation. The success of the supply chain depends on the efficient decisions of allocating funds in different functions of the departments related to the supply chain of the organisation. It includes different issues like logistic cost, transportation cost, inventory cost etc and each issue plays an important role in reducing the cost and increase the level of profit of the organisation. So, management and control of the accumulated supply chain cost are essential to the competitiveness of each supply chain participants. In other words Supply chain managers should consider that added cost should produce added value for the supply chain consumers. Decisions relating to financial issues should be such that it reduces cost within the supply chain itself so that the whole supply chain can be made cost effective and profitable for an organisation.

D.S.Polypack Industries avails working capital finance like overdraft and a short-term loan through its bank which helps it to manage the whole supply chain process smoothly. It helps the organisation to make the payments to the suppliers in time without any difficulty. Again it also helps for the smooth cycle of the whole production process without any shortage of fund to fulfill the demand without any problem. In order to reduce the cost of the different functions of the supply chain, it has taken various steps. It has not made any type of huge investment like purchase of vehicle, they have given the responsibilities to the 3rd party for inbound logistics and for outbound logistics it hires commercial vehicles when required. The organisation takes due care in incurring cost of different functions of the supply chain so that cost can be minimized to the possible extent to increase the profit to the maximum extent. FINDINGS: 1. The firm carries their business depending on only two suppliers which gives them very limited option to fulfill the requirement of their inventory. It means that the company has to maintain a good amount of inventory in hand so that in case of any uncertainties the firm can continue its production to fulfill the demand without any shortage or stoppage due to non-delivery of raw materials by their suppliers. 2. The firm does not calculate EOQ while placing order to their suppliers. As they have limited suppliers they do not have much options, they simply focus on the purchasing cost and carrying cost of the goods while placing an order to the suppliers. 3. The firm does not follow any type of sales forecasting method to forecast the sale of their products in the market. They totally depend on the market trend to forecast the demand of their product and produce accordingly. 4. The firm gives the responsibilities to the 3rd party logistic (3PL) for inbound logistics as it is more cost effective and as the 3PL is specialized in this function it avoids delay in shipment of the goods and also helps to reduce transportation cost of the raw materials. 5. As the firm have to depend on only two suppliers for their raw material requirements it provides more bargaining power of suppliers and production of the firm depends entirely on

these two suppliers it cannot go for extreme negotiation with them and have to agree to their conditions to a very large extent. 6. They make direct purchase from their suppliers without any third party in between which reduces the cost of the raw materials as no payment is required to pay to the middlemen to procure the raw materials. 7. Inspite of having good and long term relationship with their suppliers as well as the customers they dont have any kind of information technology software to share the information between them which sometimes lead to delay in information sharing and taking quick decisions. 8. The firm goes for managerial level meeting every month to review the performance of customer service department and also to analyze the feedback of the customers and sort out the problems with their products if any.

BIBLOGRAPHY: (Taylor, 2004) (Mentzer, 2005) (Teseng, 2005) (R.H.Ballou, Logistics,Supply Chain and Transport mangement., 2007) (Whang, July 1998) (S.Mazumder, 2004)

Bibliography
Ballou, R. H. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2011, from www.camdbrigecollege.co.uk . Mentzer, J. T. (2005). Supply Chain Management. In J. T. Mentzer, Supply Chain Management. R.H.Ballou. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2011, from www.camdbridecollege.co.uk. R.H.Ballou. (2007). Logistics,Supply Chain and Transport mangement. Camdbrige Internatioal College Publication , 6-8. S.Mazumder. (2004). Green Supply Chain as a competitive advantage enabler in the FMCG sector. 6-9. Taylor, D. A. (2004). Supply Chains, A Manger's Guide. In D. A. Taylor, Supply Chains, A Manger's Guide. Dehli: Pearson Education Pvt Ltd (India Branch). Teseng, T. (2005). Role of Transpotation in losgistic Chain. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies,Vol-5 , 1657-1672. Whang, L. &. (July 1998). Information Sharing in a Supply Chain.

Bbliography
Mentzer, J. T. (2005). Supply Chain Management. In J. T. Mentzer, Supply Chain Management. Taylor, D. A. (2004). Supply Chains, A Manger's Guide. In D. A. Taylor, Supply Chains, A Manger's Guide. Dehli: Pearson Education Pvt Ltd (India Branch).

(Teseng, 2005)