Supply chain coordination obstacles

Synchronized supply chain A general vision of having all links in the supply chain producing at the same rate as customer demand. Obstacles include coordination, batch size limitations in production, and inability to share information. However, synchronization is a useful goal as it is likely to provide high levels of customer service at low cost relative to unsynchronized supply chains. The term is somewhat synonymous with a lean supply chain. 

In this chapter, we extend the ideas from Chapter 9 and focus on improving coordination across the supply chain. We discuss how lack of coordination leads to a degradation of responsiveness and an increase in cost within a supply chain. We describe various obstacles that lead to this lack of coordination and exacerbate variability through the supply chain. We then identify appropriate managerial levers that can help overcome the obstacles and achieve coordination. In particular, we discuss how collaboration can improve supply chain performance. 

Any factor that leads to either local optimization by different stages of the supply chain or an increase in information delay, distortion, and variability within the supply chain is an obstacle to coordination. If managers in a supply chain are able to identify the key obstacles, they can then take suitable actions to help achieve coordination. We divide the major obstacles into five categories ... 

Having identified obstacles to coordination, we now focus on actions a manager can take to help overcome the obstacles and achieve coordination in the supply chain. The following managerial actions inaease total supply chain profits and moderate information distortion ... 

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