Supply chain responsiveness

Responsiveness refers to the extent to which customer needs and expectations are met, and also the extent to which the supply chain can flexibly accommodate changes in these needs and expectations. Thus, in the efficiency-responsiveness tradeoff introduced by the Fisher (1997) framework discussed earlier, firms whose supply chains are focused on responsiveness are willing to accept higher levels of cost (i.e., lower cost efficiency) in order to improve their ability to meet and flexibly accommodate customer requirements (i.e., higher responsiveness). Common measures of responsiveness are the following  

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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 ... 

Like the story of the three little pigs, supply chain leaders wanted to build supply chains that could withstand the winds of demand volatility or the pressure of supply disruption. These supply chains were built to sense outside-in and change the supply chain response based on market conditions. Supply chain leaders that built resilient supply... 

The goal is to identify the number and types of supply chains to improve the supply chain response. Most organizations have five to seven supply chains. Each one can be at different levels of maturity. Each one can require its own response. In general, in the design of supply chains, there are three types. They can be characterized by the type of response ... 

These supply chains are heavily driven by commodity markets and product handling considerations. The supply chain response will be driven by the input costs and the market opportunity. For example, a short life cycle supply chain with high volumes will need to be responsive whereas a product with a long shelf life supply chain and high volume can be designed for an efficient response. 

Not only can the organization not hear what customers want, the supply chain response is also not a smart response. Instead, it is typically a slow, calculated response based on historic, not market, data. 

The supply chain learning system is in our future. Rules-based ontologies, sentiment analysis, learning algorithms based on industry benchmarking in the cloud, and real-time learning systems for supply chain planners are all possibilities. Within 10 years, companies will systemically test and learn based on real-time data. While today s supply chain response is a fixed and often a dumb response based on historic data, the supply chain of the future will listen, test, and learn in real time. 

Rice Jr, J. B. Federico Caniato. 2003. Supply Chain Response to Terrorism Creating Resilient and Secure Supply Chains. In Supply Chain Response to Terrorism Project, Interim Report of Progress and Learnings, ed. J. B. Rice Jr. Boston MIT. 

Handheld RB, Bechtel C (2002) The role of trust and relationship stmcture in improving supply chain responsiveness. Ind Market Manag 31 367-382... 

PLAN processes have an operational focus, such as generating production schedules. They also cover periodic replanning project efforts, such as evaluating assets and supply chain partners. These are neglected in many companies, with replanning done only in response to a crisis of some kind. The effectiveness of PLAN processes is measured by supply chain response time and flexibility to react to supply and demand changes. 

Rice, J. B. and F. Caniato. 2003a. Supply chain response to terrorism Creating resilient and secure supply chains. Report by MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, Cambridge, MA MIT. 

To increase supply chain responsiveness The velocity at which a supply chain provides products to the customer... 

Mature risk management should also take the aspects of supply chains responsibility into account in social and environmental terms. At the same time, this type of management means the conscious identification and evaluation of risk, noticing the dependencies between risks and potential scenarios, concentration on transparent communication on risk in the whole company and in the supply chain (Deloitte 2011, p. 10). 

The Supply Chain Council (www.supply-chain.org/) recommends a metric system for performance covering the four areas of customer satisfaction/qual-ity, time, cost and assets. They provide a range of measures for each category and also provide benchmarking for their members. A sample measure is supply chain response time (SCRT). 

In the future, organisations must be much more demand-driven than forecast-driven. The means of making this transition will be through the achievement of agility, not just within the company but across the supply chain. Responsiveness also implies that the organisation is close to the customer, hearing the voice of the market and quick to interpret the demand signals it receives. 

Despite these recent studies, a critical gap in the literature remains in assessing the trade-offs between supply chain efficiency (i.e., total logistics costs) and supply chain responsiveness (i.e., supply delivery time, demand fulfillment) for aerial delivery operations in the entire military HA/DR supply chain network. None of these previous studies considered the delivery of HA/DR consumable aid via aerial delivery mechanisms. Further, none of these previous studies considered the trade-offs of response time, total cost, and amount of demand satisfied. Therefore, we seek to fill the gap in the literature while providing military HA/DR decision makers with strategic decision support using a multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework. 

Based on market/customer expectations the company segmented its supply chain into four different streams across the total source-plan-make-deliver process. The segmentation of the market/customer expectations are shown in Figure 7.4 and the supply chain response in Figure 7.5. Volume represents the number of orders/shipments variety reflects the combination of product variation and day-to-day demand variability. 

First, we provide some definitions. Supply chain responsiveness includes a supply chain s ability to do the following ... 

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