Supply Chain Management and Standards - Assignment Example

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND STANDARDS (Student Name) (Course No.) (Lecturer) (University) (Date) Supply Chain Management and Standards Question One Efficient procurement and supply chain management depend on a specific system of set standards that illustrate the effectiveness of its operations. Individuals and organisations that intend to enhance the level of their performance sets a benchmark that marks the good deeds in the procurement and supply chain management. Such standards of operation apply to all the sectors within an organization and all levels of operations without compromising the degree of production. The standards of procurement and supply chain management are the core concepts that facilitate the essence of competition among different organisations offering the same line of services or goods (Blanchard, 2010, p. 125). Regardless of the global standards of procurement and supply chain management, different individuals and organisations do set their own standards which in most cases are stricter the international standards to acquire an added advantage within the local industry. Standards within an organization play a role of identifying the current operating skills and potentials and the requirements for the continued progressive records of good performance within and without the organization. Different organisations train their procurement and supply chain professionals to be competent with the current trends of standards globally taking into consideration changes in skills and presence of capability gaps (Humez, & Flynn, 2010, p.221). In this manner, different organisations adopt the CIPS Corporate Award Programme that provides an alignment to the global standards to ensure that right knowledge and capabilities remains liable to all practitioners whether in intermediate or advanced level of operation. The regulations set by such bodies ensure equipping staff with emerging that are likely to affect the process of procurement and supply change management. Corporate Certification Standard (CCS), a special type of standard in procurement and SCM, promotes supply assurance and compliance. It ensures an organisation gain greater influence in regards to spending while maintaining an international recognition. Achieving of such standards correlates to having all the essential procurement governance mechanisms for effective supply assurance and compliance. The delivering of the award is by CIPS Corporate Certification an independent procurement assessment body with the world’s leading procurement specialists (Supply Chain Visions & Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, 2009, p.111). Once an organisation achieves such an award, it can maintain a rise in cost savings and a stronger credibility with senior management and staff. The acquisition of such standards ensures generation of stronger buy-ins and systems investment. According CIPS Corporate Certification, the measure of standards relies on five aspects, which constitutes the essential facets of all organisations. Standards provide an avenue to these dimensions through increasing levels of influence, control, and involvement in the operational systems of procurement and SCM. The five dimensions of measure of standards of an organisation include leadership and organisation, process and systems, performance measurement and management, strategy and people. For effective standards, the concepts must be favorable to all stakeholders of the organisation (Sayed, 2013, p.209). Standards also ensure maintenance of a high degree of quality management especially during the tendering processes. Within the guidelines of the standards, different aspects provide guidance to companies and organisations ensuring that products and services offered meet the standards consistently meet the customers’ need. Moreover, the system outlines the need for continual improvement of the quality of the services or products. In the process of effecting such guidelines, standards set out the criteria for quality management system. It also outlines the need for stronger customer focus through motivation and management approach. The process of determining the quality of services offered by an organisation depends on an audit that concentrates on the quality management systems as explained in the international measure of standards (Jayaram, Tan, & Nachiappan, 2010, p.107). The audit is usually independent though ensures accessibility to all the procurement and supply chain management documents to the auditors. The standards, therefore, act as measure to determine the progress of an organisation limiting its operations to the set regulations and precepts. Business partners within the supply chain management and procurement need to consider sharing complex information in order to transact business activities that guarantee support and reliable standards to their works. For example, within the healthcare sector, the manufactures are supposed to give information relating to the product and location with partners within the supply chain. In order to have an effective and efficient standard for the products, it is important to apply a common language globally. Without any form of standards, partners within the supply chain management might face high costs because of inaccurate information and inefficiencies in data (Hugos, 2003, p.85). Healthcare is one of the cases in which there are harsh standardization techniques. Globally, the sector looses about $ 11 billion resulting from wastes annually since the data standards are missing, either not globally accepted, or not well developed as required within the sector. In response to ensuring that the sector uses standardized commodities, movements are building within the healthcare supply chain to formulate, adopt, and implement data standards in order to ensure the safety of the patients and improved supply chain management. In addition, the existence of several “standards” often causes inaccuracy within the supply chain, thus inserting a lot of cost and confusion within the healthcare. These activities in most cases threaten the quality and general safety of the consumers. Consequently, all sectors are embracing the global standards in order to provide simple and consistent services to the consumers globally and optimize the functionality of the entire industrial sectors. It is possible to use the global standards by all partners within the supply chain independently within various industries or locations (Lambert & Cooper, 2010, p.115). With the growing concern over the standards of the commodities, the health sector uses GS1 system within its supply chain to help in improving the collaboration among partners considering the fact that it is globally accepted. The type of GS1 system that is common is the Global Location Number (GLN), which gives the partners within the supply chains and locations a unique identification number (Sweeney, Grant, & Mangan, 2015, p.97). GLN plays an important role in the identification of the function identity, physical entity, and legal identity within various industries of their operations. Furthermore, this method of standardization provides organizational attributes such as the name, class of trade, and the address, which ensures that GLN is specific to a particular organization. Another type of GS1 system is the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). This type of system gives a unique identification number to the trade items such as the products and services sold and rendered respectively to the consumers at any given point within the supply chain. As a result, the identification number for the trade item makes it easier to identify the trade item. It is the responsibility of the manufacturing organizations to provide GTINs to their products, which are used to identify their products on a global scale within the supply chain. Some of the attributes of the GTIN system are packaging, size, and weight which assist the end users in ensuring that the numbers are specific to particular organizations and very precise trading units’ configuration. Question Two The form of communication used between the business partners in a supply chain management managements play an important role in ensuring proper functionality of the relationship. Communication mode has the ability of enhancing collaboration between the partners. In addition, methodology used in passing the information should encourage transparency and confidentially in order to maintain the existing supply chain stronger and efficient. The supply chain management virtually has a greater impact on almost all business activities (Vangelisti, 2004, p.101). Effective and reliable communication method within the fashion industry would ensure that there is a proper coordination of activities, which is one of the most important aspects of supply chain management. It is easier to note the benefits of the supply chain management whenever an organization has an effective method of ensuring information exchange takes place as required. Organizations are moving with technology in ordering for the supplies, receiving quotations, and even making electronic funds transfer. The Australian organization that mainly focuses on the fashion materials uses electronic techniques to carry out its business activities while ensuring that it complies with all aspects of e-procurement tools (Chopra & Meindl, 2007, p.321). Construction of a communication platform for all the suppliers within the company would ensure an improvement in the relationship network and effective material flow. Moreover, platform would bring all the partners together thus reducing the cost of managing and monitoring business activities. Internet-based communication strategies are becoming very common especially within the supply chain management. Communication methods are changing since the companies are looking for channels of communications that would offer them competitive advantage in terms of speed, reliability of the information, and agility over their business rivals. Some of the communication techniques to consider as the manager are: Social media platform Creation of a social platform allows the organization to display some of its products and plans to both the customers and the suppliers who are following the organizational activities. Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are some of the platforms to consider. Furthermore, these platforms offer the media for advertising the products, ordering for fashion materials, and receiving quotations as well without any cost for such practices. Therefore, in a away, it reduces the organizational cost of production besides ensuring that all the stakeholders and the suppliers freely interact within the platform virtually. Another reason for considering social media is that it offers an immediate feedback on the taste and preference of the customers regarding organizational plans and fashion labels already existing in the market. YouTube plays an important role especially in communicating the nature of organizational materials virtually through demonstrations, which offers both the suppliers and customers an opportunity to identify the nature of the material taste in the market and contribute their views respectively. E-collaboration technique This is communication strategy that allows an organization to generate information and send to the suppliers through the emails and sharing of the spreadsheets. In most cases, it is considered simple; however, the greatest benefit that it brings to the organization is that information sharing is real time. it requires a more sophisticated technology which has the ability to perform inventory planning, online analytical processing, and enterprise resource planning (Janoschka, 2004, p.199). Inventory planning allows the organization to use its records in forecasting on the market demands within the fashion industry. On the other hand, online analytical processing systems plays an integral role of assessing the previous sales performance of the organization and compare the forecasting results with those from various suppliers. Enterprise resource planning might help in planning and scheduling organizational activities. Through connection of the company’s order and the purchasing system of the suppliers, the organization would be able to order materials automatically and track them (Bowersox, Closs, & Cooper, 2002, p.131). Moreover, this system offers the supplier an opportunity of generating invoices online and sent to the ordering client. Even though these systems play an important role in reducing the cost of communication between the supplier and the organization, it is crucial to note that they are quite expensive since the services are rented from the Application Service Provider. However, information sharing on these platforms is more secure and free from any hacking activities. Mobile device technology and related applications With globally increasing use of technology in most industries, organizations are shifting are shifting from traditional method of communication like face-to-face communications that only allowed them to communicate with a single supplier at a go. In this case, development of an organizational mobile application would be effective considering the upcoming range of supply chain mobility devices that come with pre-installed applications. These applications often assist in conducting organizational activities such as asset tracking and monitoring of the material shipment progress (Mentzer, 2001, p.221). Besides, these mobile applications would allow the organization to execute transaction processes and collaboration with both external and internal partners. With introduction of mobile application especially in logistics and supply chain management profession, suppliers and clients often stay connected making managerial activities easier since they are able to operate these activities from anywhere. Despite the errors and costs that often exist while ordering for raw materials and sending demand signals to the suppliers through mobile devices, these approach of communication still remain one of the most popular techniques of ensuring reliable supplier communication. Nevertheless, with the turning tides, most organization are embracing internet-based communication method to connect with their suppliers. With such practice, the fashion label company has an opportunity of increasing its enterprise flexibility, production cost, and customer satisfaction (Burt, Starling, & Dobler, 2003, p.209). Face-to-face approach This is a communication approach considered as the oldest, however, the method still hold a crucial part in contributing to the desired results. Face-to-face communication is the most important step of ensuring all the businesses involved in organizational supply chain are on the same page. This approach would help the organization in mainstreaming the foundation laid for future digital communication without any confusion. In every business, there are offences in getting to identify and know better the contacts involved in organizational chain supply at human-to-human level. In addition, this form of communication within the supply chain often result in improvement communication methods and better understanding of the needs and expectations of those involved. Consequently, embracing this method would offer the company an opportunity of demonstrating its fashion labels and negotiate on the cost of procuring the materials required for a given product (Greeff & Ghoshal, 2004, p.147). Through organized seminars involving all the supply chain partners, the company might have the opportunity asking respective suppliers the confidential questions and retrieve reliable answers. This offers the basis of making sensible and credible decisions in matters relating to supply chain management. References Blanchard, D. 2010. Supply chain management best practices. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Bowersox, D. J., Closs, D. J., & Cooper, M. B. 2002. Supply chain logistics management. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Burt, D. N., Starling, S. L., & Dobler, D. W. 2003. World class supply management: The key to supply chain management. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Chopra, S., & Meindl, P. 2007. Supply chain management: Strategy, planning, and operation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Greeff, G., & Ghoshal, R. 2004. Practical E-manufacturing and supply chain management. Oxford: Newnes. Hugos, M. H. 2003. Essentials of supply chain management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Humez, A., Humez, N. D., & Flynn, R. 2010. Short cuts: A guide to oaths, ring tones, ransom notes, famous last words, and other forms of minimalist communication. New York: Oxford University Press. Janoschka, A. 2004. Web advertising: New forms of communication on the Internet. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Jayaram, J., Tan, K., & Nachiappan, S. P. 2010. Examining the interrelationships between supply chain integration scope and supply chain management efforts. International Journal of Production Research, 42(7), 99-110. Lambert, D. M., & Cooper, M. C. 2010. Issues in Supply Chain Management. Industrial Marketing Management, 25(4), 101-120. Sayed, H. E. 2013. Supply Chain Key Performance Indicators Analysis. International Journal of Application or Innovation in Engineering & Management, 2(1), 201-210. Retrieved from http://www.ijaiem.org/volume2Issue1/IJAIEM-2013-01-28-059.pdf Sweeney, E., Grant, D. B., & Mangan, D. J. 2015. The implementation of supply chain management theory in practice: an empirical investigation. An international journal, 20(1), 56-70. Mentzer, J. T. 2001. Supply chain management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Supply Chain Visions, & Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. 2009. Supply chain management process standards. Lombard, Illinois: Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. Vangelisti, A. L. 2004. Handbook of family communication. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates. Read More