BNET Business Dictionary
Business Definition for: Supply Chain
- the network of manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers, who turn raw materials into finished goods and services and deliver them to consumers. Supply chains are increasingly being seen as integrated entities, and closer relationships between the organizations throughout the chain can bring competitive advantage, reduce costs, and help to maintain a loyal customer base.
Wiktionary Definition for: Supply Chain
- Aligns the capabilities of suppliers, manufacturers, channel partners & customers in order to control the physical flow of products from source to point of use.
Additional Resources
- The Triple-A Supply Chain
- The Idea in Brief The holy grails of supply chain management are high speed and low cost--or are they? Though necessary, they aren't sufficient to give companies a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals. Consider these...
- Articles 2008-04-01
- Coordinating Supply Chain Data
- The article says that with American businesses losing billions of dollars in sales every year from supply chain inefficiencies, companies need solutions that let them provide exactly the right data and goods to the right customers, partners and employees at exactly the right places and times. But many organizations' financial,...
- White papers 2003-05-01
- Supply Chain Strategy: The Importance Of Aligning Your Strategies
- Chances are you've heard the term supply chain strategy. Used informally, it is often confused with supply chain management, where supply chain operations controlled to reduce costs. There's some truth to this definition, but supply chain strategy really is broader; it defines how the supply chain should operate in order...
- White papers 2005-06-15
- Six Steps to a More Flexible Supply Chain
- The Find: With commodity prices, the availability of credit and currency valuations swinging wildly, one management consultancy believes companies need a more flexible supply chain and is offering a strategy to help them get one. The Source: A report entitled "Lowering the Volatility Quotient with a Flexible...
- Blog posts 2009-01-08
- Supply Chain Holy Grail : How the Supply Chain Will E-ffect Sales Forces
- Since the explosion of e-commerce, supply chain professionals have been theorizing about a Holy Grail. Like the knights of Arthurian legends, supply chain software providers have been searching for a mythical system that will seamlessly link the entire supply chain. The Holy Grail of supply chain management is an integrated...
- White papers 2002-10-14
- Flow Manufacturing is the Essential Component in Your Supply Chain Strategy
- The article tells that the industry has got a new ERP System to back bone the company's information management infrastructure. Now the industry is entering the new age of Supply Chain Management trying to tie all the nodes of the supply chain together so that materials flow seamlessly along a...
- White papers 2003-01-01
- Make the Most of Supply Chain Analytics
- Dell, Apple, your local grocery store -- all these companies share a common concern: supply chain management. From the initial forecast to final delivery, coordinating activities in a supply chain is a big challenge. But if you do it right, the ROI is huge. Usually the challenge boils down to...
- Blog posts 2007-07-25
- Good, Better, Best: How to Assess Your Supply Chain Performance
- Supply chain performance has never been as important as it is today. In an economy where supply chains, and not companies, battle one another, how a supply chain performs determines who will win the battle. To achieve maximum benefit from a supply chain, creating competitive advantage in the supply chain...
- White papers
- Logistics And Supply Chain Management (SCM)
- As competition becomes more global, innovation is moving from a firm-to-firm level to a supply chain versus supply chain perspective. Canadian firms must develop supply chain agility in a Just-In-Time JIT and mass customisation mode. This paper explains measurement of logistics and Supply Chain Management SCM Key Performance Indicators KPI...
- White papers 2006-10-01
- Supply Chain Intelligence
- Supply Chain Intelligence is a new initiative that provides the capability to extract, sense, and analyze information about a supply chain. It enhances an executive's ability to reason through business outcomes and prescribes the best course of action for focusing an organization on the highest impact activities. This paper will...
- White papers 2003-01-01
- Creating Supply Chain Value With Cycle Time and Inventory Yield
- A supply chain is not a series of links forged together for a common purpose. That is a nice image. However it minimizes the reality of the chain and how each link in that chain must design its own logistics process to function within the chain. As a result, there...
- White papers
- SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT.(overview of Supply Chain Operations Reference model)(Abstract)
- The Supply-Chain Council attempts to define a standard way to improve supply chain processes amongst manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and retailers. The Council introduced the Supply Chain Operations Reference model, which has quickly become the standard adopted for supply chains. The supply chain of a company is becoming increasingly important for...
- Research articles 1999-01-18
- Supply-Chain Operations Reference-model
- "The Supply Chain Operations Reference-model SCOR has been developed and endorsed by the Supply-Chain Council SCC, an independent not-for-profit corporation, as the cross-industry standard for supply-chain management. This model process reference model is designed for effective communication among supply-chain partners. It also describe, measureand evaluate Supply-Chain configurations. Standard SCOR...
- White papers 2003-01-01
- The Supply Chain Management Processes
- "Increasingly, supply chain management is being recognized as the management of key business processes across the network of organizations that comprise the supply chain. While many have recognized the benefits of a process approach to managing the business and the supply chain, most are vague about what processes are to...
- White papers 2001-01-01
- Measuring the Impact of Supply Chain Performance
- The article suggests how to achieve continuous improvement in supply chain. It provides a step-by-step guide for using the supply chain council's SCOR Model that measures both business and supply chain performance from a process point of view. It is based on delivery performance, order fulfillment lead time, supply chain...
- White papers 2003-12-01
- Supply-Chain Management
- The supply chain forms the backbone of an organization. It consists of the dealer and distributor network and extends right up to the source of the raw materials. The product passes through different stages of its development and moves from the source of raw materials to the market along the...
- Presentations 2003-01-01
- SISCO: A Supply Chain Simulation Tool Utilizing Silk and XML
- This paper discusses SISCO, the Simulator for Integrated Supply Chain Operations, a Java-based tool that simplifies supply chain simulation model development. SISCO maps supply chain descriptions stored in the XML-based Supply Chain Modeling Language SCML format to a set of supply chain "building blocks" developed with ThreadTec's Silk simulation classes....
- White papers 2001-11-14
- Supply Chain: Measuring What Matters Most
- Supply chain is among the most complex - and crucial - functions. One should learn how to ensure that supply chain performance supports his business goals. To measure the supply chain effectively, one should identify metrics that are appropriate for the organization and that will improve business performance. One cannot...
- White papers
- Global Supply Chain Program.(Northwestern University and Supply Chain Seminars offer training)(Brief Article)
- Northwestern University's "Global Supply Chain Management" program will help multinational companies answer the challenge of supply chain integration. The program will review planning models and tools for supply chain design, invent Northwestern University's "Global Supply Chain Management"...
- Research articles 2000-05-01
- Forward, March! Have you 'optimized' excess inventory and lowered costs in your supply chain? Great. But that's only the first step. Get ready to rally the troops for supply chain versus supply chain.(Supply Chain Strategies)
- SIMPLIFY, COLLABORATE, ADAPT. Those steps to supply-chain optimization seem so natural and easy in the context of Dell, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart. Yet why is supply-chain optimization still the exception rather than the rule? Why the optimization lag when common knowledge signals...
- Research articles 2004-07-01
