Supply chain customer-responsive

However, in today s fiercely competitive enviroiunent, it is not enough simply to streamline global supply chains and eliminate excess costs. Leading companies are applying new technologies and sophisticated analytics to make their supply chains more responsive to customer demand, rather than letting availability of supply drive the chain. 

Beech s model, displayed in Figure 5, portrayed the demand chain as a sequence of backward-reaching processes, initiated by the end-customer, and enabling the business to anticipate customer demand characteristics. The supply chain structure, responsible for moving products and services upstream to the customer, remained inexorably linked to the demand chain. 

Supply chain visibility— According to Blackhurst et al. (2005) supply chain visibility refers to the sharing of information in real-time across the supply chain stages and among their partners. The net effect of visibility is to make the supply chain more responsive, increase availability and reduce inventory risk. For example, Dell shares customer demand information with its suppliers so that they can maintain proper inventory of needed parts. Wal-Mart shares points-of-sales (PoS) data with its suppliers so that they can forecast and plan their replenishment strategies. 

FACILITY-RELATED METRICS Facility-related decisions affect both the financial performance of the firm and the supply chain s responsiveness to customers. On the financial side, faciUties decisions have an impact on the cost of goods sold, assets in PP E (if facilities are owned), and... 

The level of product availability is measured using the cycle service level or the fill rate, which are metrics for the amount of customer demand satisfied from available inventory. The level of product availability, also referred to as the customer service level, is one of the primary measures of a supply chain s responsiveness. A supply chain can use a high level of product availability to improve its responsiveness and attract customers, thus increasing revenue for the supply chain. However, a high level of product availability requires large inventories, which raise supply chain costs. Therefore, a supply chain mnst achieve a balance between the level of availability and the cost of inventory. The optimal level of prodnct availability is one that maximizes supply chain profits. 

Over the course of time, chemical distributors have developed in the complex small-volume, rapid-response area of chemical distribution into playing an important role in the supply chain from chemical producers to consumers. In addition to fundamental delivery capabilities, distributors offer value-added services, skills in complying with environmental and safety standards, and economy of delivery to remote and small customers. 

Figure 22.5 shows how product, customer, and market characteristics can determine different SCM strategies and design implications. For example, the strategic choice to serve niche customers with high price specialty chemicals is only tenable if the high-value inventory is centralized to reduce costs, and if a fast, responsive supply chain is set up to fill customer orders within the requested lead time from central inventory. 

Annual report both a published annual report and a published CER were received. The annual report contains both business and financial information, and includes a section titled Improving Our Customer s Results , which includes articles on supply chain and social responsibility initiatives, and includes charts of TRI and waste generation data taken from the CER. A yes score has been awarded since the reader is directed towards the website, and from there to the CER. 

To offer more choices and satisfaction to customers, business processes must be flexible and responsive. Web-based supply chain management, trading through online auctions, targeted marketing... 

This is a process of tracking an order to try to find out where it is and when it can be expected to arrive at your facility. In order to reduce some of the costs at FedEx and UPS, tracking systems have been developed and made available to their customers so they are able to track their own packages when they need to and not rely on the customer service department at the shipping comparer. This has improved service and helped satisfy their customers much faster and better. I have observed companies that have entire departments whose responsibility is to follow shipments and expedite them as necessary so everything runs as platmed. This is a potentially expensive area that can be handled more effectively with proper supply chain management. 

Another supply chain example is from Toyota. It is appreciable that every activity, connection, and production flow is rigidly documented in a Toyota plant, while Toyota s operations are very flexible and responsive to customer demands [11]. Authors mention that Toyota s rigidity of the operations make the production flexible. The way workers work, interact with each other, learn to improve, and production lines are constructed, are the principles determining how Toyota deals with its operations as experiments and teaching scientific methods to its workers. Spear [10] states that many manufacturers adopt Toyota Production System successfully, while some firms don t have success stories since they only focus on specific TPS tools and practices without recognizing the underlying philosophy. 

There are many aspects which effects customer service. Some of them are directiy influenced by the structure of the distribution network [3] response time, product variety, product availability, customer experience, time to market, order visibility, and retumability. These factors, as explained below, affect supply chain network design decisions. 

Distributors in the supply chain decrease the response time certainly. For example, Dell is a company which directly ships to the customer in an amount of time such as one or two weeks from the manufacturing stage. In such a situation, customer needs to wait and it increases the response time. However, in Radio Shack s case, the customer is able to see the products after distributors send the products to retailers. Adding more distributors may increase the product availability, lower transportation costs. The distributors increase the rate of retumabUity since it would be very hard to return the product to the manufacturing facility. 

Response time, product availability and variety, customer experience, time to market, order visibihty, and retumability effect supply chain design decisions Manufacturing processes (i.e. batch, job shop) have impact on supply chain efficiency. 

One measure of competition is response time or speed of response. Blackburn [6] and Stalk [86] describe firms that compete on delivery speed. One example is Atlas Door, an industrial door company that coordinated its supply chain to offer custom door delivery (for reactors or furnaces) within two weeks, when the industry standard was over four months. Atlas performed at this level by coordinating order quotation and scheduling production, excess capacity, and tools, synchronizing all components so that a complete kit was delivered to the construction site. Atlas s market share increased rapidly to 80% of the industry volume within five years, with a 15% price premium. 

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