Advancement of technologies and new developments in logistics/supply chain are breaking physical boundaries. Organisations are increasingly becoming multi-nationals and their supply chains crisscross the globe. With companies competing on a global scale along with stringent customer demands/requirements, end-to-end supply chain integration is turning out to be critical for business success.

Clear/real-time visibility and effective control over supply chain are equally becoming integral factors towards ensuring right quality, product delivery, and availability at shorter lead times with least possible impact to the environment. Focusing on extended supply chains also provides ample avenues and opportunities for companies to become operationally lean and agile in comparison to the traditional approach of looking within the walls of manufacturing activity.

With organisations competing on a global scale, end-to-end supply chain integration is critical for success. Additionally, with increasing customer demands to cut costs and reduce delivery lead times while providing quality products, the focus has shifted from just optimisation in manufacturing to increasing the overall supply chain efficiency. Organisations are realising these benefits, and hence there is immense pressure on the supply chain to ensure that the right quality product is available at shorter lead times to ensure uninterrupted and smooth production while managing supply chain costs.

Supply chain management

Supply chain performance management is the practice of managing the effectiveness and value of the supply chain by aligning trading partners, service providers, employees, processes, and systems to a common set of goals and objectives. Supply chain management analyses supply chain process requirements to produce objective metrics; it uses technology to track processes according to those metrics and provides managers with reliable information they can use to make accurate assessments of, and better decisions about operations and personnel.

Integrating through IT

Manufactures are linking key suppliers and customers to their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to enhance transparency in the supply chain and capture customer's requirements on a real-time basis while being able to communicate the material requirement to vendors to meet supplies on a Just-in-time (JIT) basis. Companies are focusing on reducing procurement lead times by reducing information flow time and using the replenishment model for ‘C' class items.