W7 OM Discussion - Essay Example

School: W7 OM DISCUSSION Lecturer: W7 OM DISCUSSION Different organizations have used supply chain management (SCM) for many different purposes. Most commonly however, SCM is used to regulate the flow of goods from their raw state with suppliers to their finished state when they are distributed to the consumer (Ketchen Jr., G., & Hult, T.M. (2006). The purpose of SCM is therefore to ensure that there is a coordinated effort to effectively connect all aspects of supply chain in a manner that works to the benefit of the company.

This means that the absence of SCM would mean that each of the components of supply chain will only be a disintegrated set of organizational processes (Kaushik and Cooper, 2000).Lambert and Cooper (2000) identified several major components of SCM, including planning and control, work structure, organizational structure, management methods, product flow facility structure, and power and leadership structure. By implication, for effective SCM to be said to have taken place, supply chain managers must be in a position to adequately put management processes in all of these components together.

It is for this reason that SCM has been considered to be a shared responsibility, involving the coordinated efforts of several departments and workforce within the organization (Meredith and Shafer, 2014).Once SCM is used, there are a number of benefits that the organization practicing can get. According to Mentzer, J.T. et al. (2001), SCM helps in ensuring efficiency by ensuring that supply chain managers are able to respond quickly to all issues and changes that take place within the supply chain.

This way, chances of delays are well catered for. SCM has also been noted to have the advantage of ensuring information transparency due to its open ended approach and the fact that it functions on the shared responsibility model.ReferencesCooper, M.C. and Lambert, D.M. (200) Supply Chain Management: More Than a New Name for Logistics. The International Journal of Logistics Management. 8(1), 1–14Kaushik K.D., & Cooper, M. (2000). Industrial Marketing Management. Journal of Industrial Management. 29(1), 65–83Ketchen Jr., G., & Hult, T.M. (2006).

Bridging organization theory and supply chain management: The case of best value supply chains. Journal of Operations Management, 25(2) 573-580.Mentzer, J.T. et al. (2001). Defining Supply Chain Management. Journal of Business Logistics, 22(2), pp. 1–25Meredith J.R. and Shafer S.M. (2014). Operations Management for MBAs 5th Edition. New York: Wiley.