ASSIGNMENT ON PGDSCM Program

STRATEGIC SUPPLY CHAIN

MANAGEMENT

1. Discuss the goal of a supply chain and explain the impact of supply chain decisions on the success or
failure of any firm with example. (Try to give a context of any local company)
Ans: supply chain management indicate that it is a complex undertaking that extends beyond the scope
and capabilities of a single organization. Significant effort is needed to build and maintain a supply chain
network. This involves a tremendous action list that requires expertise, time, and moneyestablishing
strategies, building relationships and roles, aligning processes, developing people, implementing
technology, and investing in capacity.

Their key goals for supply chain management should be to achieve efficient fulfillment of
demand, drive outstanding customer value, enhance organizational responsiveness, build network

resiliency, and facilitate financial success

Organizations must pursue the goal of matching supply with demand in a timely fashion through

the most efficient use of cross-chain resources.

Supply chain partners must work together to maximize resource productivity, develop
standardized processes, eliminate duplicate efforts, and minimize inventory levels.

Such steps will help the organization reduce waste, drive out costs, and achieve efficiencies in the supply
chain.

Reduction of supply chain expenses is a popular goal, particularly during times of economic

uncertainty when companies desire to conserve capital.

Efficiency initiatives can focus on any aspect of supply chain operations, though transportation
and inventory are frequent cost control targets. Together, they account for 81 percent or $1.08
trillion of U.S. business logistics system costs (Council of Supply Chain Management
Professionals, 2013).

Impact of supply chain decisions on the success or failure

Successful supply chain management requires many decisions relating to the flow of information,
product, and funds. These decisions fall into three categories or phases, depending on the frequency of
each decision and the time frame over which a decision phase has an impact.

Supply chain strategy or design: During this phase, a company decides how to structure the

supply chain over the next several years.

Supply chain planning: For decisions made during this phase, the time frame considered is a
quarter to a year. Therefore, the supply chains configuration determined in the strategic phase is
fixed.

Supply chain operation: The time horizon here is weekly or daily, and during this phase
companies make decisions regarding individual customer orders.

Example:

2. Describe how a company achieves strategic fit between its supply chain strategy and its
competitive strategy with an example of your company.
Ans: In achieving the strategic fit, it is important to know that the desired level of responsiveness
can be achieved by assigning different levels of responsiveness to each SC member. If one
member has the ability to provide a desired level of responsiveness at a reasonable cost, then it
allows other members to be more cost-efficient. Indeed, we can assign different roles to the
different members. In contrast to the leagile strategy, the roles of individual members in
achieving a given level of responsiveness are not fixed. Each members role depends on its
ability. One critical issue, which is the main concern each Supply chain member uses its potential
ability if and only if using the ability creates benefit to itself in addition to the others. Therefore
if a costly role is assigned to one member, that member must be compensated and acknowledged
by other members to guarantee its participation.

Example:
The proposed model for achieving strategic fit in Keya Company is based on the model and extends their
model by providing more practical insights using the concept of coordination. Afterwards, there are two
main steps to achieving strategic fit:

The functions and stages that devise an integrated strategy with a shared objective.
At one extreme, every operation within each functional area devises its own independent

strategy with the objective of optimizing its individual performance.

In this case the scope of strategic fit is restricted to an operation in a functional area

within a stage of the supply chain.

At the opposite extreme, all functional areas within all stages of the supply chain devise

strategy jointly with a. Common objective of maximizing supply chain profit.

In this case the scope of strategic fit extends to the entire supply chain. In this section we
discuss how expanding the scope of strategic fit improves supply chain performance.

For Strategic fit we have to consider following two things such as

1. Establishing the supply chain strategy based on the implied uncertainties
2. Specifying the specific role of each SC member in achieving the established SC strategy.

3. Explain distribution design networks first 4, with strengths and weaknesses.

Manufacturer Storage with Direct Shipping (drop shipping)

Strengths
Weakness
es

Ability to centralize inventories at the

manufacturer
Provide a high level of product availability
with lower levels of inventory.

Transportation costs are high because the

average outbound distance to the end
consumer is large, and package carriers
are used to ship the product.
Package carriers have high shipping costs
per unit compared to truckload or lessthan-truckload carriers.

Manufacturer Storage with Direct Shipping and In-Transit Merge

Strengths
Weakness
es

Aggregate inventories and

postpone product customiza tion is
a significant advantage of in-transit
merge.
Transportation costs are lower than
with drop-shipping
Investment in information
infrastructure is higher than for
drop-shipping
The party performing the in-transit
merge has higher facility costs
because of the merge capability
required

Distributor Storage with Carrier Delivery

Strengths

Transportation costs are somewhat

lower
The information infrastructure needed
with distributor storage is significantly
less

Weakness
es

Facility costs (of warehousing) are

somewhat higher
Time to market under distributor
storage is somewhat higher than under
manufacturer storage

Distributor Storage with Last Mile Delivery

Strengths
Weakness
es

Last-mile delivery is easier to justify when

the customer is a business like an auto
dealer purchasing large quantities
Last-mile delivery may be justifiable if
customer orders are large enough to provide
some economies of scale

Delivery requires higher levels of inventory

Transportation costs are highest for last-mile
delivery

4. Explain the supply chain IT framework in terms of supply chain macro processes such as
CRM, ISCM and SRM and also the relationship with transaction management foundation.
Ans:The Supply Chain It framework in terms of Supply Chain Macro Processes are given below.
1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
2. Internal Supply Chain Management (ISCM)
3. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): The processes that take place between an
enterprises
and its customers downstream in the supply chain.
Key processes:
1. Marketing Good It systems in the marketing area within CRM provide analytics that
improve the marketing decisions on pricing, product profitability, among other functions.
2. Selling Good It System support sales force automation, configuration, and
personalization to improve the sell process.
3. Order management- Good It systems enable visibility of orders across the various
stages that an order flows through before reaching the customer.
4. Service center Good It systems have helped service center operations by facilitating
and reducing work done by customer service representative and by routing to
representative who are best suited to service their request.
Internal Supply Chain Management (ISCM):Includes all processes involved in planning for and
fulfilling a customer order
ISCM processes:
Strategic Planning- It focuses on network design of the supply chain.
Demand Planning it consists of forecasting demand and analyzing the impact of demand of
demand management tools such as pricing and promotions.
Supply Planning Factory planning and inventory planning capabilities are typically provided
by supply planning software.
Fulfillment Once a plan is in place to supply the demand, it must be executed. This process
links each order to a specific supply source and means of transportation.

Field Service Finally, after the product has been delivered to the customer, it eventually must be
serviced. Service processes focus on setting inventory levels for spare parts as we as scheduling
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM): Processes focused on the interaction between the
enterprise and suppliers that are upstream in the supply chain.Key processes:
Design Collaboration -This software aims to improve the design of products through
collaboration between manufacturers and suppliers.
Source - successful software in this area helps analyze supplier performance and manage
contracts.
Negotiate- successful software automates the RFQ process and execution of auction.
Buy Successful automation in this area helps the procurement process and decreases
processing time and cost.
Supply Collaboration - Once an agreement for supply is established between the enterprise and a
supplier. Supply chain performance can be improved by collaborating on forecasts, production
plans, and inventory levels.
Supply Chain Macro Process
ISCM

CRM

SRM