Question

Supply Chain Management

A supply chain involves all the activities associated with how manufacturing, materials, facilities, personnel, transportation, inventory, and other items flow and then are transformed into goods and services. Every asset, information, and process is part of the supply chain. For this Discussion, you will be addressing how the supply chain works and possible issues you may encounter.

Within this complex system, operation management responsibilities can be both strategic and tactical.

Examine the place where you currently work, or a prior career, and identify a single service or product produced by your organization.

Identify the different components of the supply chain for that product or service (list them from beginning to end). Be sure to identify which parts of the supply chain are considered "upstream" and "downstream" exchanges.

Based on what you learned from your research, describe a single current issue that might negatively impact a company's global supply chain.

Answer 1

A supply chain is mainly the combination of various players which enables the organization to collect the raw material and provide the finished products to the final customer. This chain initiates with thee suppliers which can be an ordinary supplier of the raw material. These suppliers who facilitate the raw material to the organization are termed as upstream suppliers while the downstream associates of the supply chain are the manufacturing facilities, distributors and ultimate end-user customers

Currently, I am employed in a medical proper care organization and my organization is facilitating the healthcare solutions rather than the products itself. The operations initiate from the front desk or the customer care representative who takes the calls from the prospects and schedule the meeting between the customer and the team. In my current organization, the upstream supply chain members are mainly the nursing staff and the suppliers of the organization.

The downstream supply chain is constituted by the Lab, radiology, drugstore and the other additional solutions. In these levels, the customer has to be diagnosed clinically and we facilitate the required advise or solution depending on the situation of the person before the individual leave the medical centre.

Government rules and regulations are the main issues which are faced by the medical proper care solutions worldwide. As different government have different regulations related to healthcare, it is getting very tough for these organization to adhere the various norms in different parts due to lack of standardized policies. The import of export of medical equipment and other related products are facing a very high level of restriction and quality control which is again not uniform worldwide. This really hampers the company's global supply chain as the country changes, the supply chain has also to be changed and it results in greater cost, deficiency in operational excellence and issues in coordination and policy adherence.