Supply Chain Management and E2Open - Part 1

Supply Chain Management, is a system with multiple organizations, with multiple people performing multiple activities with multiple resources in moving a product/service from the Supplier to the Customer.

Let’s take the example of the mobile you are currently using to read this article i.e. an iPhone.

There are multiple components inside an iPhone, which in this case can be called as raw materials, like Chips, LEDs, Circuit Boards, Wire etc.

All these will be sourced by Apple Inc. from various suppliers across different countries for a price and agreement – Sourcing and Procurement

Then, they are assembled in China, which is part of the Manufacturing

Before going to the market or to the distributors, they store the final product i.e. an iPhone in the warehouse. Warehousing plays a role in multiple steps of the supply chain, starting from raw materials to finished product at different levels i.e. at manufacturer to distributor to reseller to retailer.

Using Transportation, iPhones are then distributed or sent to various Distributors across the globe, who then transports the goods to various re-sellers and retailers.

Retailers then display the phones in the shelves of the store, for end-customers like you and me to buy.

As how Supply Chain is called to be the backbone of Commerce today in the world, I believe Information Technology is the backbone for the Modern Supply Chain, which is data-driven, non-linear and global.

E2Open is an IT company to spark a change with your supply chain as the tag line says, bringing end-to-end visibility across all the functions of your supply chain for a company to plan and execute in real-time.

There are multiple other details which can be detailed on this topic, while I am keeping it simple and easy to break the complexities on this subject of Supply Chain Management.

In my next article, I shall attempt to simplify on how E2Open plays a role in the different functions of Supply Chain Management starting from Suppliers to Customers, through its intelligent applications.