Supply Chain Management

In the business world, the term of supply chain management may be recognized as a new system. However, the application of this management system has been implemented for ages, especially since the industrial revolution was taken place. Supply chain itself can be defined as the physical, financial and information networks of the logistics movement process of materials, funds and related information. Obviously, every organization has undergone these processes ever since they established their company for the first time. It is just the term of supply chain management had not been used until world war II. The mentioned business processes have to be accomplished in order for the company to run their business. For instance, before coming to the finished product, a manufacturer of chair has to know how they will obtain the resources from and how they will transform the given resources into tangible products. Once the end product has thoroughly produced, they still have to find out how they are going to sell it to the customers. The whole processes do not end here, manufacturers also need to consider how they will obtain customers feedback for the purpose of improving their business processes, satisfying customer needs and finally gain competitive advantage among any other competitors. Having explained the term of supply chain, a further discussion of supply chain management can be held. It can be argued that supply chain management is the knowledge, methodology, system, strategy or etc, used to manage the whole supply chain process, start from finding raw materials, until obtaining feedbacks from customers. The main purpose of this new management system is to make the whole business processes run more collaboratively and integrated with each other. It is expected that the outcome of a good supply chain management system will benefit a company in achieving efficiency as well as satisfying customers.