Supply Chain Integration

Supply Chain Integration

Nowadays, the development and manufacturing of products has become increasingly complex in global economy. Especially in the last decade, with the development of the information technological advances coupled with globalization, companies are in the race for improving their organizational competitiveness in order to survive in the fast-changing global market. These competitive pressures have a strong and direct effect on the supply chain strategy and integration as the market is electronically connected and dynamic in nature.

Typically, multiple communities of suppliers are involved in product design and development, and these communities are geographically dispersed. In this case, an integrated system of communication is crucial for the company to indentify problems in the production line and respond quickly to any changes in the supply and demand.

Therefore, it becomes vital for a company to obtain an integrated supply chain system to communicate effectively with manufacturing partners and managing inventory across the supply chain.

Fast fashion.

Fashion is the imitation of a given example and satisfies the demand for social adaptation...the more and article becomes subject to rapid changes of fashion, the greater the demand for cheap products of its kind. (Georg Simmel , 1904)

In the fashion industry, efficient supply chains are a crucial element. The key issue in the whole process of the fast fashion would be the selection of a merchandising vendor. As the product circles are relatively short in this industry that if the suppliers fail to respond quickly enough to the fast changing reality, the clothing will end up bottlenecked and in back stock as a result.

Globalization

The force of globalization is changing supply chains and lead to industry concentration and relocation. Companies are relocated their product manufacturing to some labour-intensive counties like China and India in order to reduce production cost.

Globalization and outsourcing have created many supply chain risks as well as benefits. The greater the globalization companies facing, the more the companies need to use the supply chain management to collaborate with other firms that have complementary skills and capabilities which would be another way to reduce the cost of supply and improve effectiveness of management.

Analysis--integration

Plan

Coats is a multi-national company in thread area which has just relocated its manufacturing department from Euro to Asia and Latin America to reduce production cost. As it will still operate its business in a Europe base, a integrated supply chain system now becoming increasing important.

Coats need to form a integrate planning with other enterprise business processes to achieve its business objectives. This would contribute to superior business performance by ensuring that decisions are timely and well prepared and that their implications are understood, agree on and feasible.

The following three aspects are to be