原创 供应链管理学习笔记（一）

供应链管理的重要元素

Important elements of supply chain management

A number of important elements with the topic of supply chain management are introduced here.

1. Purchasing elements

Traditional buyer-supplier relationships emphasize multiple sourcing, competitive bidding, and use of short-term contracts; these often-adversarial relationships pit the buyer against the supplier and focus primarily on the purchase price of the product instead of the capabilities of the suppliers and how they can contribute to the long term competitiveness of the buying organization.【1】 Recently, there has been a shift toward developing more long-term supplier relationships for the competitive benefits described earlier. Purchasing is an extremely important element in supply chain management, since incoming material quality, delivery timing, and purchase price are dependent on the buyer-supplier relationship and the capabilities of the supplier. Problems with suppliers will ultimately cause end-product customers to get less and pay more.

One of the most crucial issues in purchasing is supplier management. Simply put, this means getting your firm’s suppliers to do what you want, and there are a number of ways to do this. This involves assessing your suppliers’ current capabilities and then figuring out how to improve them. Thus, one of the key activities in supplier management is supplier evaluation, or determining the capabilities of suppliers. This occurs both when potential suppliers are being evaluated for a future purchase and when existing suppliers are periodically evaluated for performance purposes. A closely related activity is supplier certification. Certification programs can either be company-designed and administered, or they can be internationally recognized and standardized programs like the ISO 9000 series of certifications.【2】 Supplier certification allows buyers to assume the supplier will meet product quality and service requirements, thus reducing duplicate testing and inspections and the need for extensive supplier evaluations.

2. Operations elements

Controlling or managing inventory is one of the most important aspects of operations and certainly valuable to the firm. Firms can and typically do have some sort of material requirements planning (MRP) software system for managing their inventory. 【3】These systems can be linked throughout the organization and its supplier chain partners using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, providing real-time sales data, inventory, and production information to supply chain participants.

Another common form of inventory management is through use of a just-in-time (JIT) production system. Also called a pull-type production system, as apposed to MRP’s push-type production system, the objectives are create a fast, flexible system capable of delaying final assembly until a downstream (customer) order occurs.【4】

An important aspect of JIT is the quality of the incoming purchased items and the quality of the various assemblies as they move through the various production processes. This is due to the characteristically low inventory levels of purchased goods and work in process in JIT oriented facilities. Thus, firms and supply chain employing JIT usually have a total quality management (TQM) strategy in place to ensure continued quality compliance among suppliers and with internal production facilities. The type of inventory control system used (MRP versus JIT) is especially important when considering the design of the supply chain (for instance, where to construct distribution centers, what transportation services to use, and how big to make the various production facilities and warehouses).【5】

3. Distribution elements

When products are completed, they are delivered to customers through a number of different modes of transportation. Delivering products to customers at the right time, quality, and volume requires a high level of planning and cooperation between the firm, its customers, and the various distribution elements or services employed (such as transportation, warehousing, and break-bulk or repackaging services).【6】 For services, products are produced and delivered to the customer simultaneously in most cases, so services are extremely dependent upon service capacity and successful service delivery to meet customer requirements.

Transportation management decisions typically involve a trade-off between cost and delivery timing or customer service.

The desired outcome of distribution is customer service. In order to provide the desired level of customer service, firms must identify customer requirements and then provide the right combination of transportation, storage, packaging, and information services to successful satisfy those requirements. Through frequent contact with customers, firms develop customer relationship management strategies regarding how to meet delivery due dates, how to successfully resolve customer complaints, how to communicate with customers, and how to determine the distribution services required.【7】

Designing and building a distribution network is one method of ensuring successful product delivery. Again, there is typically a trade-off between the cost of the distribution system’s design and customer service.

Successful service delivery depends on service location (service providers must be close to the customers they are trying to serve), service capacity (customers will leave if the wait is too long), and service capability (customers must be able to trust what servers are telling them or doing for them). Hard goods producers must also be concerned with the delivery of service products for their customers, such as providing warranty repairs and information, financing, insurance, and equipment troubleshooting and operating information. Thus, all firms must be cognizant of the impact of service location, capacity, and capability on customer satisfaction.

4. Integration elements

Up until now, the basic elements of supply chain management have been discussed: purchasing, operations, and logistics or distribution process activities occurring among the firm and its (potentially several) tiers of customers and suppliers. The final step- and certainly the most difficult one—is to coordinate and hopefully seamlessly integrate these practices among the supply chain’s participants.【8】

Activities in a supply chain are said to be coordinated when members of the supply chain work together when making delivery, inventory, production, and purchasing decisions that impact the profits of the supply chain.【9】 If one activity fails or is performed poorly, then supply along the chain is disrupted, which jeopardizes the effectiveness of the entire supply chain. Successful supply chain integration occurs when the participants realize that supply chain management must become part of all of the firms’ strategic planning processes, in which objectives and policies are jointly determined based on the final customers’ needs and what the supply chain as a whole does well. Ultimately, the firms act together to maximize total supply chain profits by determining optimal purchase quantities, product availabilities, service levels, lead times, productions quantities, and technical and product support at each tier within the supply chain.【10】

This integration process also requires better internal functional integration of activities within each of the participating firms, such that the supply chain acts as on entity. This idea of supply chain integration can run contrary to the notion among many potential supply chain participants of their firm’s independent profit-maximization objectives, making supply chain integration a very tough sell in many supplier-buyer-customer situations. 【11】Thus, continued efforts are required to break down obstacles, change attitudes, change adversarial relationships, reduce conflict, and bridge various functional barriers with and between companies if supply chain integration is to become a reality.

笔记:

1传统的买卖关系重视多重供货来源、有竞争的价格和使用短线合同。那些买方和供应商之间经常存在的敌对竞争关系使买方更注重购买价格，从而忽视了供应商的能力及他们的能力能否给买方带来长远的竞争力。

2一个密切相关的活动就是供应商认证。认证项目可以通过公司指定或者可以借助国际上通用的认证体系来进行，例如ISO 9000.

3控制或管理库存是生产活动中很重要的一个方面，它会给公司带来价值。公司可以运用物料需求计划的软件系统(MRP)来管理他们的库存。

4也可以称之为拉动式生产系统，与有物料需求计划的推动式生产系统相反，目的是创造一个更快更灵活的体系，有能力根据下游客户订单的产生而完成最终的装配任务。

5库存控制系统（物料需求计划或准时性生产控制系统）的选择在考虑供应链的设计（例如哪里建立一个分销中心，采用什么样的运输方式，多少种类的产品，仓库有多大）时非常重要。

6能够及时的给客户提供保质保量的产品，就要求具备一个高水准的计划，公司间、客户间、不同分销环节和相关服务的高度配合（例如运输、仓库、卸货和重新包装服务）。

7针对如何满**货期，如何成功的处理客户抱怨，如何与客户间沟通和如何确定所需的分销服务等，不断与客户、公司保持联系来发展融合的客户关系策略。

8最后一步且是最艰难的一步就是协调和紧密融合供应链中的所有环节。

9当交货、库存、生产和采购决策这些对供应链效益有重要影响的因素在活动时，供应链中的各个环节要协同作业。

10基本上，公司间共同协作会使采购数量、产品有效性、服务水平、交付期、生产产量、技术和产品支持得到优化，使之在供应链中受益匪浅。

11供应链整合的理念，会颠覆在供应链的环节中所涉及公司独立获利、目标最大化及供应链中的供应商、买方和客户之间强买强卖的概念。