Distribution supply chains

Distribution is an important activity in the integrated supply-chain management of pharmaceutical products. Various people and entities are generally responsible for the handling, storage and distribution of such products. In some cases, however, a person or entity is only involved in and responsible for certain elements of the distribution process. This document sets out appropriate steps to assist in fulfilling the responsibilities involved in the different aspects of the distribution process. The guidelines are intended to apply to all steps in the distribution/supply chain. The relevant sections should be considered by various role players as applicable to their particular role in the distribution process. The document does not specifically cover... 

The two primary industry consensns programs for managing transportation risk are the Responsible Care Distribntion Code of Management Practices and the National Association of Chemical Distribntors Responsible Distribution Process (RDP). These programs share similar elements and are widely used across the chemical distribution supply chain. Responsible Care is a recognized internationally performance-based system that contains the following elements ... 

In a distribution supply chain, products flow out in a fan-shaped structure to the retailers. Consider the example of a warehouse and retailers in Figure 2.2. Even if the retailers serve independent markets, the retail supplies are linked because the warehouse inventory policy affects the supply to otherwise independent retailers. But the presence of the warehouse may generate significant benefits to the supply chain by enabling bulk commitments by the wholesaler or plant, which can deliver to the warehouse, followed by a distribution to retailers as their demands unfold. The warehouse thus offers the benefits of demand risk pooling and enables geographic postponement of the deliveries to retailers. We will analyze the impact of such risk pooling in Section 2.3. 

Distribution Supply Chains Risk Pooling and Inventory Impact... 

Consider a distribution supply chain consisting of a set of n downstream retailers linked to a common source warehouse. There is a common inventory pool at the warehouse shared by all downstream locations. Suppose the supplier lead time is Z. If every retailer faced a demand with a mean of /x and a variance of cr, then the common pool of inventory at the warehouse would be nLjx) + Zstandard normal value whose cumulative probability is the service level offered to retailers, and Z is the supply lead time. 

If each individual retailer carried its own inventory, it would maintain an inventory level of Lfi + (Zct-JL). Thus the total system inventory would be n LfX, + (Zct-JL)). The pooled inventory includes a safety stock of Z(Jy/nL while the individual locations would generate a safety stock of Z(7n-jL. Thus, the role of the warehouse in a distribution supply chain is to decrease the buffer capacity by a factor of Jn. This - fn effect is a rule of thumb to estimate the benefit of consolidating inventory in a supply chain. 

Radke AM, Tseng MM (2015) Design considerations for building distributed supply chain management systems based on cloud computing. J Manuf Sci Eng Trans 137 1-11... 

A highly complex and distributed supply chain makes it difficult to shut down the entire system by interruption at a single point. However, determining if an attack at a dominant node or a dominant link of the supply chain of a critical chemical would bring production to a standstill is a high priority in determining overall vulnerability. In order to achieve a widespread interruption in production for an extended period, multiple, well-placed interruptions would have to occur at one or more dominant nodes or dominant links (or both)—in most cases, at multiple geographic locations. 

Bovet, David. Good Time to Rethink European Distribution. Supply Chain Management Review (July-August 2010) 6-7. 

Petrovic, D. Xie, Y. Burnham, K. Petrovic, R. (2008) Coordinated control of distribution supply chains in the presence of fiizzy customer demand. In European Journal of Operational Research, 185(1), 146-158. 

The physical location of the toller can impact logistics, transportation and distribution issues. If you have a market need in a region of your countiy or a foreign location, a component to consider in selection of the successful toller is the capacity to provide support to the client distribution system or shortest supply chain. 

It is stated in the standard that the standard can also be applied throughout the automotive supply chain. This implies that vehicle manufacturers should apply the requirements to their own operations, but obviously such application is voluntary. In due course, ISO/TS 16949 will become a condition of any contract to supply products and services to the vehicle manufacturers. The supply chain includes vehicle distribution and dealers. However, it is not intended that ISO/TS 16949 be applied beyond the vehicle manufacturers at this time. 

Chemical companies are also weak at looking for opportunities downstream of their own operations. Whilst most would recognise the need to understand the business of their customers, few look further downstream and try and understand their customer s customer. However, if your materials can reduce energy consumption or waste production in a final product, you reduce the costs further downstream and potentially change the value distribution across the entire supply chain. If you understand how your products are used downstream, you can share that value with your customers. 

Enterprise level - supply chain of materials or components, network of production sites, inventory hubs, sales and distribution centres, R D and the integration of various plants. 

At present, the trend is moving from the analysis of individual production and logistics systems towards the optimization of entire production networks, that is, the optimization of the distribution to different production locations taking account of the procurement and distribution chain as indicated by the remarks on supply chain simulation earlier in this chapter. However, in particular for these applications there are some challenges in the basic work of providing consistent and coherent data describing the processes at different sites which most likely are located in different countries. 

Different types of industries require different characteristics to be taken into account, because in model-based planning the real decision situation must be represented adequately, as the solution will otherwise not provide any benefit. Along the lines of Meyr and Stadtler [3], the characteristics of different supply chains can be classified into functional attributes (procurement type, production type, distribution type, and sales type) and structural attributes (topography of a supply chain, integration, and coordination). 

In addition to their use as stand-alone systems, LPs are often included within larger systems intended for decision support. In this role, the LP solver is usually hidden from the user, who sees only a set of critical problem input parameters and a set of suitably formatted solution reports. Many such systems are available for supply chain management—for example, planning raw material acquisitions and deliveries, production and inventories, and product distribution. In fact, the process industries—oil, chemicals, pharmaceuticals—have been among the earliest users. Almost every refinery in the developed world plans production using linear programming. 

The network aspect in supply chains is illustrated by Shapiro where supply chain networks are composed by notes connected by transportation networks (Shapiro 2001, p. 6). Compared to Corsten, Shapiro extends the supply chain including many-to-many-relations between vendors, plants, distribution centers and markets. 

Distribution locations are included in the company-internal value chain network, if distribution volumes and values are under the control and in the books of the company independent if the warehousing and transportation is outsourced to 3PL distribution companies or not. Therefore, a company value chain network is enclosed with a central control of all volume and value information for the respective network and clear interfaces to customers and suppliers out of the network. While the internal value chain network is focused on material flows evaluated with respective internal costs, dedicated interfaces to multiple suppliers and multiple customers are characterized by material flows, financial flows and mutual instead of one-directional exchange of information as proposed for supply chains by several authors. 

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