Supply Chain Management in Engineering and Construction - Annotated Bibliography Example

Annotated Bibliography, Engineering and Construction Introduction Supply chain management is an emerging avenue for competitive advantage between companies. It includes all the activities which are integrated to produce a smooth flow of operation efficiency. It does not only preserve the time and value of the product but also makes the costumers satisfies. I am personally inclined towards the supply chain management because of immense opportunities and future prospects. Importance of supply chain management is not only being felt in industries and satisfying costumers, but its sphere of application has been on a constant rise. I am amazed to see the application of supply chain management in medical and emergency missions, rescue and relief efforts in times of disasters and other societal settings improving the living standards. Thus, I see a great prospect for the supply chain management in the near future. Supply chain management is an important aspect for efficient production because supply chain controls and manages the flow of product. In other terms, supply chain controls the flow of capital in an industrial setting. The title supply chain management encompasses all the activities from planning and control of materials and/or information within different parts of one organization or between different companies. Supply chain management links different portions of industrial activities like manufacturing, purchasing, distribution of commodity and its transportation. Thus, every field of engineering gets integrated with the operation of production efficiency (Reddi and Moon). It is interesting to note that in an industry, important activities like transportation, warehousing, and inventory control, sourcing, procurement and supply management all comes under the single head of supply management. While, outside of the organization, supply chain management includes interactions with suppliers, distributors, carriers, and with customers. Thus, results in increased market share and better competitive advantage. In order to successfully compete in the market company needs two things; first to control the expenditure on the production (i.e., product should be cost effective) and secondly, the product must satisfy the needs or desires of the costumes. In such a way, the company maintains its competitiveness while expanding market share. Pricing, thus, plays an important role in this regard (Zhang, Wang and Li). It’s amazing that the whole world works like a giant supply chain system. Highly developed supply chain necessitates best infrastructures, i.e., roads, railway network, port and airports to make things readily available. But the concept of supply chain will not be complete without the application of proper engineering practices. The merger of these two vast fields has resulted into Supply chain engineering. Supply chain engineering focuses on the basic principles involved in production and distribution system in the industry. Supply chain engineering revolves around development and improvement in production system through uses of empirical and practical evaluation of the system. Supply chain engineering is also concerned with integration of management policies and engineering techniques to enhance efficiency of multi-dimensional supply-demand sector (Baston and McGough). From the decades of eighties, a fierce competition has erupted between companies creating pressure in global competitive market. In order, to meet the demand of the competition, manufacturing technology has been globally used to raise the efficiency and better management. Engineering in Supply chain further, reduce the costs through reduction in Man-hours. The ability of the industry to process, produce, operate and maintain can be maximized through engineering interventions. Supply chain Engineering encompasses various methodologies involving tools and technologies to harmonize the supply chain management by removing any hurdle in the smooth flow of processes. The evolving field of Supply chain engineering has been on constant focus to make the system flexible and lowering the initial cost involved in operation and production. Therefore, this new field offers limitless opportunities in research and as a career. Therefore, in industrial engineering, SCE will surely be on the boom in the future, and this has created curiosity and interest in me about this subject. Annotated bibliography 1- Baston, R. G. and K. D. McGough. "A New Direction in Quality Engineering: Supply Chain Quality Modelling." International Journal of Produciton research (2007): 5455-5464. International Journal of production research is a research publication which carries research papers on manufacturing technology. International Journal of Production research also deals with issues related with production and its resources. It deals with papers oriented with planning strategy and implementation and assessment in production house settings. Baston and McGough are professors in Department of Industrial Engineering in the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, United States of America. Dr. Robert Baston has research interests in engineering and quality management supply chain management quality and reliability and safety engineering. This paper explores the avenues for application of engineering in supply chain. It elaborates the uses of tools to develop and improve the quality of the product inside a manufacturing industry. The paper insists that the existing strategies comprising of information and control of quality management must be aided with new and advanced tools and new network models. These improvements will help the company to make a strategy and develop the existing level of quality in manufacturing chain supply. It is clear that a raw material and the parts of the product, decide the nature of the product that reach the customer. Supply chain quality and analysis determine the supply chain management efficiency by efficient quality planning and improvement. This paper also put stress on application of quality engineering and modeling Supply Chain Management, as there is very little work done on it. Network models of two kind were discussed, i.e., discrete and continuous. 2- Reddi, Krishna and Young B. Moon. "Modelling Engineering Change Management in a New Product Development Supply Chain." International Journal of Production Research (2013): 5371-5291 International Journal of production research is a research publication which carries research papers on manufacturing technology. International Journal of Production research also deals with issues related with production and its resources. It deals with papers oriented with planning strategy and implementation and assessment in production house settings. Reddi, Krishna, and Young B. Moon belong to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Syracuse University, USA. Krishna R. Reddi is a doctorate from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and his research interests include engineering change management, lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning. Young B. Moon is the Director of the Institute for Manufacturing Enterprises. Young B. Moon is on the Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Sycracuse University, United States of America. His research areas include enterprise system, product realization processes and systems, product lifecycle management, and modeling and simulation. This paper reports that aim of integration of different parts of the system into a coherent system can be well achieved through starting from product design. In order to serve this purpose, the authors have used a formal engineering change management (ECM) process. This system includes various entities and factors which work harmoniously to develop a product. This paper also suggests how to handle New Product Development process (NPD) and posits that the stage of the project determines how to the development of new product. The relationship between the NPD and ECM is also studied by modeling and studying parameters. 3- Zhang, Li, et al. "A Few Measures for Ensuring Supply Chain Quality." International Journal of Production Research (2011): 87-97. Li Zhang is affiliated with College of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing China, Song Wang is with School of Management, Xian Jiaotong University, Xia, China, Fachao Li with College of Economics and Management, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang, China, Hong Wang with School of Business and Economics, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, Li Wang with School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing, China and Wenan Tan with Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, Shanghai, China. International Journal of production research is a research publication which carries research papers on manufacturing technology. International Journal of Production research also deals with issues related with production and its resources. It deals with papers oriented with planning strategy and implementation and assessment in production house settings. This paper focuses on the assurance and coordination on the quality through planning and operational tools. This coordination lasts from suppliers to manufacturers, warehouses, transporters, marketers, and ultimately the consumers to ensure that exact product has reached the exact consumer. Paper discloses that supply chain coordination, technology application, reduction of risks quality assurance is the important parameter to induce sustained supply chain. Better management of supply chain means making better coordination. Coordination in terms of the authors is the integration of different parts to attain a collective task of and to reap mutual benefits. To achieve a competitive advantage firm should make sure that the customers are getting a qualified product in their hand. Every customer expects a product that he sees in the advertisement and wants a similar product. Quality assurance is also a main part of Supply Chain Management and the team responsible for it must check that the customers are given a better product which also fulfills their needs. In order to get the competitive advantage firm uses tools like outsourcing and product variety making Supply chain management more and more enfeebled causing various disturbances. Therefore, the risk factor must control through using appropriate tools. Read More