Supply Chain Management

Yes, I agree as these days organizations are facing increasing competitive pressures hence forcing organizations to push towards innovation, as increasing the rate of innovation will shorten the product’s duration in the market therefore compressing each product life cycle. If not managed properly it will increase its manufacturing and design cost. Moreover, by running frequent product development cycles would need additional product development resources. A shorter production will affect the organization ability to reach its potential to reduce manufacturing cost by exploiting the learning curve and sale economics. Unless businesses can effectively handle numerous generations of the product then there is a considerable risk that costs would spin out of control. Thus, more companies should make supply chain design a core competence as it fights against the problems that prompt the intensity of increased competition and shorten the product life cycles. Additionally, supply chain design helps to enhance a suitable supply chain for the organization’s operating environment (Willems, 1999).

Some organizations work assiduously to restructuring or redesigning the supply chain and has proven to be a success as several firms has reported success stories such as Hewlett Packard, Toyota and Chrysler etc. The design of the supply chain includes a broad range of decisions and according to Skintzi, design decisions could be grouped in three categories: traditional design decisions, product and process design decisions and decisions that allow responsiveness to uncertainty and variability (Skintzi, n.d.).

The traditional design choices concern the facility attributes of each supply chain node, the number, area of facilities and the interconnections between the production node, that is the track that products would proceed through the flow of the supply chain as well as the mode of transportation. Next the product design decisions which concern the effort to match the market goals together with high supply chain performance. The most common strategy is postponement as it enables the supply chain to be responsive to unsureness and variability involving supply chain management flexibility, which comprises of flexible location, outsourcing etc. Inventory control comprises into all three of the categories (Skintzi, n.d.).

One of the most vital element in supply chain design is determining how a successful supply chain design is attained when performance measured. One of the most important factor the decision makers must be aware when making critical decisions is that many decision framework, for instance demands and costs would shift dramatically from the decision time to implementation time. Regrettably, most facility models treat all framework as consistent as compared to the flexibility of inventory management decision as well as distribution decisions. However, facility decisions are usually fixed and complicated to change. Hence Shen, Coullard and Daskin had implement an integrated inventory risk pooling model together with location models to address the problems. By putting together random demands, cost reduction and better forecast of demand can be achieved. Supply chain design has been a considerable challenge for organizations who continuously try to improve customer service. Brzoznowski said that by looking at a model and visualizing on how supply chain works is eye-opening to people, that is true constructing a supply chain design model accompanied by customer service goals is a task on for most businesses, upon working on it would enable organization with high competitive advantage among competitors in the market. Nonetheless,