Supply chain management missions

WHERE DOES SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT FIT INTO THE MISSION AND VISION OF AN ORGANIZATION ... 

There are mat r areas that need to be covered in the mission statement specifically. One of these is the relationship with customers and suppliers. By placing this in the mission statement it is easy to communicate the executive commitment to managing the supply chain. Effective supply chain management really is based on relationships. 

Table 6.1 describes choices for a supply chain manager s missions, the timeframes of concern to the supply chain manager, and roles and responsibilities. Also indicated are the traditional functions that are likely to be affected by each mission or role. This is an indication of the impact a decision to assign that role to the supply chain manager might have. 

Missions, listed at the top of Table 6.1, are broad in nature. The supply chain manager may have none of these, one, a few, or all those on the list of four missions. Chapter 1 described SCM as a function that integrates supply and demand management within and across companies. Does that mean that for companies at any supply chain position in Figure 6.2, a single manager should have that job description This is a decision many face, particularly if the job is described as end-to-end operating responsibilities. ... 

The remainder of Table 6.1 defines roles and responsibilities for the supply chain manager. These, of course, depend on the assigned mission. The purpose of the list is to present some of the possible options sorted by time horizon. Long-term items, often one to five years, are infrastmc-ture decisions described in the description of Hayes and Wheelwright s manufacturing strategy model in Section 4.3. 

Linking the Supply Chain with the Customer 83 TABLE 6.1 Missions and Roles for the Supply Chain Manager... 

Chapter 22 identified two missions for process improvement (1) process evaluation and (2) process redesign. This chapter describes industry-developed process tools that support the first mission, evaluating supply chain processes. The two tools have assembled best practices in SCM. They are products from two SCM business associations, the Supply-Chain Council and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), formerly the Council of Logistics Management (CLM). The CSCMP, in the cited quotation, supplies the reason for describing these models. 

Supply-Chain Council (see) A nonprofit association of companies interested in supply chain management (SCM). The Council was incorporated in June 1997 as a not-for-profit trade association. The Council offers members an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of supply chain relationships from the customer s customer to the supplier s supplier. Its primary mission is to develop and maintain its Supply-Chain Operations Reference Model, or SCOR. 

Defining the vision, mission and general principle of a company is helpful before starting to assess the company s situation. Questions which need to be asked involve the key principles and core values of the company. The identity of a company derives from its mission statement and its core principles. Furthermore it is important to define the fields of activity as well as the strategic objectives of your company. Besides defining its identity, this will help to assess the future direction of the company within supply chain management. 

To operationalise these principles requires an output orientation to costing. In other words, we must first define the desired outputs of the logistics system and then seek to identify the costs associated with providing those outputs. A useful concept here is the idea of mission . In the context of logistics and supply chain management, a mission is a set of customer service goals to be achieved by the system within a specific product/market context. Missions can be defined in terms of the type of market served, by which products and within what constraints of service and cost. A mission by its very nature cuts across traditional company lines. Figure 3.8 illustrates the concept and demonstrates the difference between an output orientation based upon missions and the input orientation based upon functions. 

We have looked at mat r areas of management and developed organizational mission and vision statements that included supply chain behavior in them. The mission and vision statements are the overarching umbrella for the management of the business and should include the supply chain. 

As there will be potentially thousands of nodes and links the challenge to supply chain risk management is to identify which of them are mission critical . In other words, how severe would the effect of failure be on the performance of the supply... 

Supply chain and operations departments have the distinct capability of impacting a corporations financial performance from several vantage points. Moreover, they are in a position to carry out the corporation s mission and business strategies, enabling the company to compete in the marketplace. It has also been demonstrated that revenue streams, material cost, use of assets, and resultant cash flows are greatly affected by supply chain and operations activities. This chapter summarizes and connects many of the ideas presented in this book and where supply chain and operations managers can make substantive improvements within their companies. 

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