Decision Phases in Supply Chain

Decision Phases in Supply Chain

Successful SCM requires decisions relating to the flow of Information, Product and Fund.

There are three such Decision phases which are explained below----

Supply Chain Strategy -

This type of decision is taken by the management mostly. As the decision includes long term prediction and contains cost of say very expensive if it goes wrong. The market conditions should be taken into consideration at this stage.
The prediction and condition of market for next years are important in these decisions. The decision may include the structure of supply chain after making structure the tasks and responsibilities of each stage like as we know there is transportation storage of material produced. Production of material, plant location which should be easy for transporters to load material and to dispatch at their said location. Location of warehouses for storage of finished product or good and so on. All these decisions are strategic decision s taken by higher authority.(Management).



Supply Chain Planning -

By keeping in mind the supply chain design phase the next i.e. Planning should be done according to the demand and supply view. The most important to know about demand and supply is Market Research and the Component of Mkt. Research.

The another thing which i would like to put in front of you is the competitors and strategies they are following to meet their customer requirement. Demand may be different in different market. By forecasting it which market will be provided the finished goods from which plant is planned in this stage. Everyone in this field or firms try to make the overall process as flexible as they can make it. The supply chain design phase if performs good in shorter term the planning is said to be successful.

Supply Chain Operations -

Operations decisions are those that should be made within minutes, hours or days. The aim of this phase is reducing uncertainty and performance optimization.
All that is involved in this phase is from customer order handling to providing the customer with that product.
Suppose a customer requires a product which your company manufactures, It is first of all the responsibility of marketing department to take order, convey it to production dept. and inventory dept., production dept. produces acc.to the customer need sends it to warehouse through a proper channel and distributor to customer within a time frame. All the department in this process involved should try to improve the performance and minimize uncertainty.