Page - 1

Introduction

Would you like to be responsible for managing huge budgets, complex transactions and multiple supplier negotiations almost in the early part of your career? Then a career in supply chain management may be the right one for you.

In today's modern world, we are able to get almost anything we want from any part of the world; thanks to a concept called supply chain management. This includes fruits from New Zealand, oranges from United States, apples from North India, and coconuts from coastal India. What makes all of this possible are the logistics and multiple-level distribution systems collectively called supply chain.

The supply chain channel encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management activities. Supply chain management software is the software used in executing supply chain transactions, managing supplier relationships and controlling associated business processes.

A well-known fact underlying the importance of SCM is that 1 dollar saved in supply costs is equal to 10 dollars extra sales (~ 10% profitability). As organizations grow increasingly cost competitive as well as trying to increase speed of responsiveness to customer demand, systematic approaches to supply chain management are the need of the hour. The demand for trained supply chain management professionals has been steadily growing in both domestic and global markets.

Types of Roles in SCM

There are various roles in Supply Chain Management. These can be broadly divided into: -

1) Logistics & Transportation - This involves the transportation and moving of raw materials, processed goods, from one point in the supply chain to the other. These include transportation hubs like ports, railways, storage facilities, production centers, and distribution points .Focus in on reducing the per unit transportation cost to a minimum while optimizing on speed of delivery and keeping goods safe and intact. For special items like perishables and food products, this may include a frozen or cold chain for transporting goods at lowered temperatures.

2) Procurement & Vendor Management - This involves managing multiple vendors including relationship management, quality assessment and support, and extracting maximum long term value from vendors. This seeks to avoid over reliance on one vendor while going towards building both redundancy and removing complexity of managing large number of vendors.

Next

* Ajay Ohri is an alumnus of IIM Lucknow, and has worked with some of the largest BPOs in India (including two BPOs listed on NYSE).
Currently, he is running his own database consulting firm, and is the founder of his website business
http://decisionstats.com.
The views expressed in the article are his personal views.
Article posted on August 4, 2008.