Question

Essay

What is the supply chain process? What are some of the issues US companies face moving goods and products from one stage to another, ending with customer sale (supply chain)?

Answer 1

Supply Chain Process - Supply chain process is defined as the process of transportation of ram materials from the vendors/ suppliers to the organization and shipment/ dispatch of finish goods from the organization to customer warehouse locations. This requires high skill set on transportation & logistics processes for management of shipments of materials from one location to another location.  

Supply Chain Process Design: Design of supply chain process is defined as the design of the optimized routes to enhance the flow of material shipment starting from the vendors to company and company to their customers in an optimized and efficient ways to reduce the overall cost and resources with at competent lead time.

The design part is basically exploring the multiple options in the supply chain and finalizing the best cost effective solution for the supply chain which meets the lead time requirements and lowest possible resources. The design is required because, the supply chain calls for the shipment of materials from multiple locations to one company and one company to multiple customers, which requires to travel in various countries, states and regions. While travelling from various countries, states, regions, the commercial laws, taxes, legal formalities and commercial acts needs to be followed by the supply chain design.  

Key Strengths of Supply Chains Process :-

1. Flexible to meet customer demands – The supply chain processes or operations are now flexible enough for carryout the changes as per customer requirements. Hence these help to meet customer transportation requirements easily.
2. Easy Change Management – The changes can be incorporate easily in the supply chain processes. This helps to avoid any delays/ disturbances due to change introductions.
3. Outsourcing Players – In the current scenario, we can get many players who are well trained and competent for supply chain management, hence easy availability of resources.
4. Low Cost Model for organization – The outsourced models are available at agreed market prices based n heavy negotiations with 2 or 3 parties. This helps to manage the cost effectively and helps to get the low cost model.
5. Ease in management of supply chain models – Due to the competent resources or players in the market, it is nowadays become easy to manage the supply chain model with outsourcing strategy.
6. Easily meet customer & vendor requirements – The supply chain model can be easily managed for customers of vendors requirements, as and when needed without any major issues to the organization.

Key Weakness of Supply Chains :-

1. Inadequate roots of transportation – The Supply chain model may not have adequate roots for speedy delivery of products, which may have some impact on timeline of product delivery.
2. Inadequate coverage of geographical regions – The selected supply chain vendor may not have the presence in some of the regions of welding company customers or vendors, which could delay the shipments.
3. Online monitoring of the shipments – The supply chain model do not have online monitoring of the shipment, which makes difficulties in assessing the right location of the shipments.
4. Difficulties in managing the urgencies – The supply chain model may not be always supportive in managing the urgent shipments.

Some of the issues US companies face moving goods and products from one stage to another, ending with customer sale (supply chain) are as below

• Urgent dispatch to customer location: US companies are facing major issue in delivering the urgent dispatches to their customers, as the supply chain model works on their process and at fix schedules.

• Tracing the shipment in the route: The main problem for the US companies is that they are not able to trace the shipment during transportation, and they need to reply fully on the timelines of supply chain service providers.

• Lack of Supply chain player in uncommon route: US companies are facing issues shipment of material in uncommon routes, due to lackof service providers in uncommon routes in the country.

• Delay in supply to remote locations: US companies are facing issues delivering the goods to the remote locations, as the lead time of dispatch in remote locations is high due to low demand of materials.

• Quality Issues: The quality issues are reported in transportations process of supply chain and handling processes are not robust which results in quality issues to damages.