Supply Chain Strategy

What is a Supply Chain?


Supply-chain is a term that describes how organizations (suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers) are linked together.

What is Supply Chain Management?

Supply-chain management is a total system approach to managing the entire flow of information, materials, and services from raw-material suppliers through factories and warehouses to the end customer.

Formulas for Measuring Supply-Chain Performance

One of the most commonly used measures in all of operations management is “Inventory Turnover”

In situations where distribution inventory is dominant, “Weeks of Supply” is preferred and measures how many weeks’ worth of inventory is in the system at a particular time.

Example of Measuring Supply-Chain Performance

Suppose a company’s new annual report claims their costs of goods sold for the year is $160 million and their total average inventory (production materials + work-in-process) is worth $35 million.  This company normally has an inventory turn ratio of 10.  What is this year’s  Inventory Turnover ratio?  What does it mean?

= $160/$35

 = 4.57

Since the company’s normal inventory turnover ration is 10, a drop to 4.57 means that the inventory is not turning over as quickly as it had in the past.  Without knowing the industry average of turns for this company it is not possible to comment on how they are competitively doing in the industry, but they now have more inventory relative to their cost of goods sold than before.

Hau Lee’s Concepts of Supply Chain Management

• Hau Lee’s approach to supply chain (SC) is one of aligning SC’s with the uncertainties revolving around the supply process side of the SC
• A stable supply process has mature technologies and an evolving supply process has rapidly changing technologies
• Types of SC’s

           -Efficient SC’s

           -Risk-Hedging SC’s

           -Responsive SC’s

           -Agile SC’s

Hau Lee’s SC Uncertainty Framework

 What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is defined as the act of moving a firm’s internal activities and decision responsibility to outside providers. 

Reasons to Outsource

• Organizationally-driven
• Improvement-driven
• Financially-driven
• Revenue-driven
• Cost-driven
• Employee-driven

Value Density

• Value density is defined as the value of an item per pound of weight.
• It is used as an important measure when deciding where items should be stocked geographically and how they should be shipped.

Mass Customization

• Mass customization is a term used to describe the ability of a company to deliver highly customized products and services to different customers.
• The key to mass customization is effectively postponing the tasks of differentiating a product for a specific customer until the latest possible point in the supply-chain network.