Supply Chain Uncertainty : A Review And Theoretical Foundation For Future Research

Changes within the supply chain can disrupt the normal flow of goods and services because each change hasn’t been fully scrutinized. A firm can plan and speculate that a change with have a certain effect on the supply chain, but until those processes have been measured it is impossible to know the true cause and effect of any disruption.

Supply Chain Opportunity in an Uncertain Economic Recovery, by Eric G. Olson, discusses the advantages the supply chain has in a struggling economic recovery, when most other companies are dealing with uncertainty. The authors’ intention contained in this article is to discuss opportunities that businesses have to grow their operations despite coming out of a severe recession. The author identifies to take advantage of these opportunity, companies must be willing to be more flexible and that scalability is much easier to implement coming out of a severe recession. The author provides a design, methodology, and approach to implement these changes, highlighting the scalability and flexibility benefits, mitigation if multiple risks, identification supply chain opportunities.

A supply chain is a net work of firms. Thus, each firm in the chain should build its own supply chains to support the competitive priorities of its services or products. Two distinct designs used to competitive advantage are efficient supply chains and responsive supply chains. Efficient supply chains work best in environments where demand is highly predictable. The focus of the supply chain is on efficient flows of services and materials keeping inventories to a minimum. The firm’s competitive priorities are low-cost operations, consistent quality, and on-time delivery. Responsive supply chains designed to react quickly in order to hedge against uncertainties in demand. Work best when firms offer a great variety of services or products and demand predictability is low. Typical competitive priorities are development speed, fast delivery times, customization, variety, volume flexibility, and top quality. Tables below show the environments and design features that best suit each design.

Risk and Consequence: Tales from the Industry Supply Chain Risk Categories Disruptive Events, Uncertainty and Impact Models and Methods for Supply Chain Risk Management Example of Risk Management for IBM’s Product Supply Chains An Approach for Measuring the Impact of Identified Supply Chain Risks Key Lessons from IBM’s Supply Chain Risk Management Approach The Landscape: Supply Chain Risk Management Supply Chain Risk Management: Getting Started In Summary Authors Footnotes

In the shed of globalization and intense competition between companies in high variance environment in term of changes in technologies and demands from the customers, many companies have to identify the best ways to overcome such circumstances and uncertainness in their business and operation. The major objective of their identification is to further improve the flexibility. To achieve this objective, the companies have to ensure each component in their supply chain must be designed with respect of flexibility (Borhanazad and Tran, 2012). Relevant theories reveal the linkage between upstream supply chains must be well-maintained through the sourcing strategy.

Supply chain is one of the pivotal for any business. All successful organization whether they are profit, non -profit, government, public service rely heavily on the supply chain management. A supply chain can bring a competitive advantage and benefits to any company however there are many risk associated with supply chain which

Information is the base to which supply chain decisions are made (Chopra & Meindl, 2010) making it imperative to performance (Forslund & Jonsson, 2007). As the key supply chain driver (Tippins & Sohi, 2004) it utilises other drivers to create an integrated, coordinated chain. Information alone does not guarantee success (Moberg, et al., 2002); reliability and validity are amongst the key fundamentals, defined in Table 1.1.

Faculty of Production and Operations and Finance, Department of Management Studies, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India, and

As we all know supply chain is one of the most important areas which if handled properly can provide competitive edge to the companies. Supply Chain Supply change management is the control of resources, information, and capital Management of supply chain management is the most challenging and complex task because of ever changing needs of companies, products and customers. The instabilities in the market are also one of the reasons. When a company faces problem of excessive inventory, increasing costs, decreasing profits, poor return on assets and poor customer satisfaction then the company has to improve or look after its supply chain or if a company is entering into a new market or new technologies then it should have a well settled plan for its supply chain management. Same was the case here as well.

What is supply chain? Cottrill (2010) notes that “People often think it is only about moving boxes, something to do with transport and logistics; it almost gets narrowed down to the warehousing and delivery piece”. In reality, supply chain does not only focus on moving products from one place to another places. It involves every stages from the beginning that customers want to buy products until they pay and become satisfied with goods. Manufacturer and suppliers, customers, retailers, warehouses and transporters are all parts of the supply chain (Chopra et al., 2004). Due to globalization and market uncertainties, there is a changing competitive environment in doing business. I believe that a supply chain can keep on improving in such condition by implementing ‘The Triple-A Supply Chain’ strategy which is agile, adaptable and aligned. The term agile refers to an ability to quickly respond to unexpected changes for instance natural disasters and epidemics. Adaptable can be defined as an ability to adjust oneself to deal with problems such as political changes and demographic trends in order to

We live in interesting times. Powerful forces are re-shaping the global business scene : financial and economic upheaval in the Far East, Latin America and Russia is creating a tidal-wave of change in the competitive environment. Organisations that once felt insulated from overseas low-priced competitors now find that they too must not only continue to constantly create new value for customers, but must do so at a lower price. To meet the challenge of simultaneously reducing cost and enhancing customer value, requires a radically different approach to the way the business responds to marketplace demand. One of the keys to success is the creation of an agile supply chain on a worldwide scale.

“Supply chain management (SCM) is the oversight of materials, information, and finances as they move in a process from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer.” The literature review used in this paper is focused on supply chain management and risk management though the business side of the

This paper describes the challenges of supply chains management. It examines the various areas that contribute to and organization 's strategic planning operations to enhance its profitability. It identifies the various elements of value to supply chain operations.

The strategic management of the supply chain does not consist of introducing innovations in order just to innovate. It is about creating a configuration that will make the strategic objectives progress. According to Slack et al. (2004, p.67) an « operations strategy concerns the pattern of strategic choices and actions that set the purpose, objectives and activities of operations ». According to Hayes (2005), efficient operations strategies need to be consistent and contribute to competitive advantage. The process of operations strategy covers the activities and dynamics of strategy elaboration and implementation (Swink and Way, 1995), whereas the content of operations strategy consists of the particular decisions regarding competitive priorities, objectives, and action plans that specify the operation 's strategic direction.Several authors gave their definition of operations strategy; four interrelated perspectives then emerged. The top-down approach is « what the business wants operations to do » and the bottom-up perspective represent « what day-to-day experience should do ». Top-down strategy can be distinguished from a bottom-up strategy in terms of two aspects: the initiative 's origin and the sequence of events amongst purposes, actions, and results. Top-down strategy is triggered by top management 's aims and manifests in the performance outcomes of stipulated actions. Bottom-up strategy is initiated by lower managers’ actions realizing their own interpretations

Business generally is frosted with various challenges, and that facing supply chain seems not to have gained adequate attention. Challenges could force early exit on firms’, thus imposing loses on investments. Therefore to ensure effective and efficient minimization of loses, improve profit, and operate competitively, it then becomes imperative to critically research on the challenges and proffer solutions that would minimize the impact on the chain.