Supply Chain Management Field Study

INTRODUCTION:

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT (SCM) is integrating management practices and information technology to optimize information and production flow among the processes and business partners within a supply chain. SCM is a management concept that integrates the management of supply chain process.                                                  

WHAT IS SUPPLY CHAIN?

·     Consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer request, include not only manufacturers & suppliers, but also transporters, warehouses, retailers & even customers.

·     Today's supply chain is broad, deep, and continually evolving, which means that it must be agile to be effective. In the past, supply chains met enterprise and customer needs through a beginning-to-end model that was largely unaffected by change.

·     Raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, and trade and order management must all be coordinated to get a given item to the customer within a reasonable timeframe.

Basic supply chain process

1.  In a supply chain, virtually all of the members serve as both customers as well as suppliers.

2.   In the Li & Fung example, the Korean yarn producer and the Japanese zipper producer are probably only suppliers and the customer’s customers (folks like you and me) are probably only customers.  

3.  Every other organization in the supply chain is both a customer and a supplier.

4.  Customer is now playing a front- and - centre role in setting SCM priorities. It’s been said that “customer experiences live and die in the supply chain.”

WHY IS SCM SO IMPORTANT?

·     TO Gain efficiencies from procurement, distribution and logistics

·     To reduce transportation costs of inventories

·     To meet the challenge of globalization and longer supply chains.

·      To meet the new challenges from e-commerce

·      To manage the complexities of supply chains

·      To manage the inventories needed across the supply chain

 IMPORTANT ACTIVITIES INCLUDE DETERMINING

? Transportation vendors.

? Credit and cash transfers.

? Accounts payable and receivable.

? Sharing customer, forecasting, and production information.

WHAT ARE THE MERITS AND DEMERITS OF SCM?

MERITS:

§ With the increased visibility into the supply chain and adaptive supply chain network, you can be more responsive. You can sense and respond quickly to changes and quickly capitalize on new opportunities.

§ By offering a common information framework that supports communication and collaboration, SCM enables you to better adapt to and meet customer demands.

§ You can track and monitor compliance in areas as environment, health and safety.

§ With SCM, you can low operational expenses with timelier planning for procurement, manufacturing and transportation.

§ Better order, product and execution tracking can lead to improvements in performance and quality - and lower costs. You can also improve margins through better coordination with business partners.

§ Tight connection with trading partners keep your supply chain aligned with current business strategies and priorities, improving your organization's overall performance and achievement of goals.

DEMERITS:

§ SCM is hard to implement in immature/informal organizations.

§ SCM can fail if both parties are not willing to share their insights, information throughout.

§  If in an entire SCM chain even one single node is hiding information, this will affect the profits and gains of the entire network which may finally collapse.

§ So, transparency is highly required in SCM.

§ Costs.

§ Requires trust.

§ Imbalance of power.

§ Strategic challenges.

FUNCTIONS OF SCM

OBJECTIVES & GOALS OF SCM :

·     to cut costs.

·     Increase profits.

·     Improve performance in relationships with customers and suppliers

·      Develop value added services that give a company a competitive edge.

·      Objective is to be able to have the right products in the right quantities (at the right place) at the right moment at minimal costs

·       Reduced inventory, reduced lead times, reduced warehouse cost, helps in forecast accuracy.

SUPPLY CHAIN RISK

·     More reliance on supply chains means more risk.

·     Fewer suppliers increase dependence.

·     Compounded by globalization and logistical complexity.

·   Vendor reliability and quality risks ü Political and currency risk

               SUMMARY

·     Segmentation of customers based on service needs.

·     Customization of logistics network.

·     Listen to signals of market demand and plan accordingly.

·     Differentiate product close to the customer.

·      Develop a supply chain wide technology strategy.

Analytics through charts based on the user surveys that we conducted

Online Research Links

1)https://www.engpaper.net/supply-chain-management-research-papers.htm

2)https://hbswk.hbs.edu/Pages/browse.aspx?HBSTopic=Supply%20Chain%20Management

3)https://www.supplychain247.com/topic/category/papers

4)https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/1359-8546/vol/19/iss/5/6

5)https://ctl.mit.edu/research/past-projects/supply-chain-2020-project/papers-supply-chain-2020-project

Customer Journey Map   

customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer journey (also called the buyer journey or user journey). It helps you tell the story of your customers' experiences with your brand across all touchpoints 

Empathy Map

                         Empathy map is a collaborative tool teams can use to gain a deeper insight into their customers. Much like a user persona, an empathy map can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment. The empathy map has gained much popularity within the agile community

Affinity Diagram:

                                     Affinity Diagram is a tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships . The Affinity process is often used to group ideas generated by Brainstorming

User interviews - https://youtu.be/1MEdcsdtsZ4

                         User interviews can be a great way to extract information from users for user experience understanding, usability understanding and ideation. They are cheap and easy to conduct and can be readily conducted by anyone who can ask questions and record the answers

Faculty Meet - https://youtu.be/XRmgKOq9j2Q

                                  The objective of a staff meeting is to provide updates, deliver announcements, solicit feedback, to clarify all our dovets , share information and participate in a team environment

Users survey - https://tinyurl.com/47dvjlkw

                                                user survey is a set of questions used to collect topic-specific information from a representative sample of your target audience.

                    This survey aims to identify the perceptions of the users with regards to their experience while using the product/service. Such a survey can enable businesses to understand views of the users about their product/service and hence try to improve certain areas which can help them to keep these customers loyal and may be even promote it.

User Personas

            User personas can help you understand users' motivations and needs and how these translate to online use and consumption and, ultimately, purchasing decisions;

They can help to understand negative issues such as perceived obstacles or problems in your website or product range or deficits compared to competitors

Implementation of Data Science

Price Optimization

                         Selling a product at the right price, not just for the customer but also for the retailer or manufacturer is an important task. The price must not only include the costs to make the product but also the ability of a customer to pay for that product keeping in mind competitor prices as well.

All of this is calculated with the help of machine learning algorithms which analyzes a series of parameters like the flexibility of prices, taking into consideration the location, buying attitudes of an individual customer and competitor pricing. It then comes up with the optimal price that can benefit all the parties. This is a powerful tool for retailers to market their product in the right way with optimal pricing.

Implementation of Mathematical Programming

                                  Location analysis is an important part of data analytics. Before a business can decide where to open up their business, it is crucial to analyse plausible business locations to settle on the best one .

The algorithm used in this case is simple, yet effective. The analyst analyzes the data giving importance to demographics. The coincidences in zip codes and locations gives a basis for understanding the potential of the market. Competitor markets are also taken into consideration while analysing locations. The algorithm also analyses retailer networks to come up with the most suitable option.

Conclusion:

              This article is all about the field study that we have conducted on our supply chain management business system to gain insight about the users of the product that we design

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