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Supply Chain

In business terminology, supply chain is the name given to a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, their transformation into intermediate and finished products, and then later the distribution of these finished products to customers. Although it may seem that supply chains are only important to manufacturing industries, they exist in service industries also. The actual level of its complexity may, however, vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm.
Traditionally, marketing, distribution, planning, manufacturing, and the purchasing organizations along the supply chain operated independently. The objectives of these organizational divisions are always different and conflict with each other’s objectives. . Marketing puts a higher emphasis on high customer service and maximum sales dollars conflict with manufacturing and distribution goals. Many manufacturing operations are designed to maximize throughput and lower costs with little consideration for the impact on inventory levels and distribution capabilities. Purchasing contracts are often negotiated with very little information beyond historical buying patterns. The result of these factors is that there is not a single, integrated plan for the organization---there were as many plans as businesses. Clearly, there is a need for a mechanism through which these different functions can be integrated together. Supply chain management is a strategy through which such an integration can be achieved.
Supply chain management is typically viewed to lie between fully vertically integrated firms, where the entire material flow is owned by a single firm, and those where each channel member operates independently. Therefore coordination between the various players in the chain is key in its effective management. For a supply chain to work efficiently, all the different divisions of it must perform in harmony. The most important relation in this...