Today, I attended very interesting seminar on Supply Chain Management at Pune Project management conference.
The supply chain is entire process from arranging the raw material to produce goods till the hand over the product to the customer.
Let understand, how product flows from supplier to customer.
At very first there has to be demand of the product, so first understand how demand gets generated. There are 2 important types of flows in Supply chain.
- Information Demand Flow
- Product Flow
Information demand flow usually goes from customer to the manufacturer, where customer demand specific product to the manufacturer. Example iPhone.
Product Flow usually goes from manufacturer to customer, where manufacturer creates the demand in the market through various channels, then the customer buys it.
There are various stakeholders requires to create an entire supply chain.
- Raw material Suppliers
- Manufacturers
- Inventory Managers who stores the produced goods
- Distributors who distribute the products to various countries and cities
- Retailers are local shopkeepers who directly sell the product to the customer
- Customers
There are three critical elements in Supply chain management.
- Supplier
- Production Facility or Factory
- Customer
Supplier do the procurement of raw material and do the vendor development and management.
Factory prepares the master production schedule which provides production needs at the top level, which typically done for 3-6 months prior planning. The factory also maintains the inventory of raw material which production keeps flowing. It also manages the distribution network and transportation.
Customer element is responsible for demand planning, do the forecasts, keep order management, tracking which allows customer to place the order to fulfilling the order by delivering the product.
They also finally showcased live case studies to understand how supply chain management works well with these companies and factors to their success.
- Mumbai’s Dabbawalla
- Starbucks