Supply chain management generally

Following the rationale of Shi and Gregory (1998, p. 199) that a company should first optimize the elements of a supply chain under its own control, issues related to the inter-organizational integration and coordination of supply chains will generally not be covered in this work. For an overview of specific inter-organizational supply chain management tasks... 

Fandel G, Stammen M (2004) A general model for extended strategic supply chain management with emphasis on product life cycles including development and recycling. International Journal of Production Economics 89 293-308... 

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... 

Purchasing/procurement/supply management/supply chain management are some of the names that are used to describe a function that continues to grow in value to organizations in general and pharmaceutical companies in particular. 

E-Com Supply Chain and SMEs by Ron Craig, takes the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in supply chains. It reviews the important role of SMEs in national and world economies. The chapter provides an extensive overview of literature on supply chain management (SCM), information and communication technologies (ICTs), and e-business. Both opportunities and challenges for supply chains in general and SMEs in particular are considered. The future direction for researchers and practitioners are pointed out. 

The main general supply chain management problems are ... 

The conunon knowledge refers to industry standards and generally accepted supply chain management concepts. The common knowledge facilitates established mappings between concept definitions in repositories maintained by individual supply chain units, thus leading to easier establishment of the common repository used by the supply chain configuration system. 

This chapter describes the information technologies used to support supply chain configuration, both from the decision-making and decision-implementation perspectives. Information technologies include hardware, communications, and software. Here, the focus is on software. Hardware and communications are described only at the conceptual level in relation to the general architectures of information technology solutions in the supply chain management framework. 

Distributed system. This characteristic mainly owes to the spatially distributed nature of supply chains. Supply chain partners are physically distributed around the world, and the design of the supply chain information system accounts for this problem. An additional important feature is the lack of centralization that complicates management of the supply chain information system. Eor instance, one supply chain partner generally is not able to use its system to enforce the security policy in the system owned by another partner. 

When referring to the application of Poirier s model, one should stress its considerable contribution to the promotion of the supply chain management concept, while simultaneously pointing out its limitations due to the high generality of recommendations and lack of reference to the diversified conditions of supply chain operation. This is particularly important if supply chains operate in unfavourable business or social conditions. In such a situation, the improvement potential of Poirier s model and its credibility in terms of application may prove insufficient. 

Generally, available information on material flows provided by MFCA along upstream and downstream firms in a supply chain can ensure for reducing material losses and help to supply chain managers that have an effective decision on resource productivity as well as improvement in competitive strategies such as product variety and quality, while cost reduction is happened. 

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