Supply Chain Inventory Management and the Value of Shared Information - Example

Running Head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Supply Chain Management [The Writer’s Name] [The Name of the Institution] Supply Chain Management Introduction Over the past few years the area of Supply Chain Management (SCM) has received much attention by a large number of academics, consultants and practitioners who are involved actively or not with the processes of developing, manufacturing, distributing, commercialising/selling and ultimately delivering a product or a service to end consumers. This ever-increasing interest has been caused by two main reasons. The first one is that people have started to realise the competitive advantage and overall benefits such as big cost reductions, decreased time deliveries, increased efficiencies, and higher profitability that can be gained by managing effectively and in a more collaborative way supply chain activities. The second reason is basically the sum of all the environmental/external-market trends and pressures such as demanding customers, rising competition, more complex products/services, and shorter product life cycles, which push organisations to look for more flexible, efficient, integrated, innovative and responsive mechanisms for running and managing their supply chains' activities. Numerous and prominent people in the area of SCM have been engaged in the task of developing and building theoretical frameworks and other sophisticated methodologies for helping organisations with the processes of IT/IS for SCM selection and evaluation, but it seems that they have only partially succeeded in their goal. Some studies report that 70 percent of the IT/IS used for SCM by companies fail totally or partially to achieve their expected objectives. A recent survey, which was administrated to 100 big US companies, half of which are in the Fortune 100, revealed that more than 8 percent of those companies, had entirely abandoned the IT/IS that was supposed to be used for their SCM. Although for obvious reasons IT/IS vendors, consider such percentages as absolutely unacceptable and fake, and cite cases of organisations that have achieved incredible supply chain benefits and advantages, by successfully selecting and implementing IT/IS for their SCM. The notion of Supply Chain Management It is general accepted that in nowadays the topic of Supply Chain Management (SCM) has become subject of great contradictions and discussions, for an extensive number of academics, consultants and practitioners. This simultaneous, multidimensional exploration of the same issue has created a lot of confusions and misunderstandings over its focus, its components and its defined terminology. So according to Croom et. al. (2000); Tan et. al (1998); Andersen 2000; Ghiassi and Spera (2003), the terms: integrated purchasing strategy, network-sourcing management, value chain management, value stream management, supply pipeline management, supply base management, supply chain synchronisation and other similar terms, are all employed to describe and define one single process; the management of the supply chain. But what does it mean when individuals talk about supply chain and why should supply chain be managed? Talluri (2000, p.221) by giving more emphasis to the participants and less on the processes and flows performed in a supply chain defines supply chain as "a network of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and customers". WebFinance (2003) suggests a broader description of the term supply chain by defining it as "a network of retailers, distributors, transporters, storage facilities and suppliers that participate in the sale, delivery and production of a particular product." Similarly to WebFinance the subject of a supply chain is defined as the sum of all the activities, information, stages and actors involved, from the production stage of a product/service until its final consumption stage by the end customer/user. Supply chains exist in most business organisations today, whether they are dealing with services or with physicals products. Many authors and researchers such as Vorst et al (1998), Ballou (1978; 1985) and Koch (2002), have tried to identify and classify the key activities and processes that take place in a supply chain system, but in the author's opinion with partial success, for instance Vorst et al (1998) in their paper describe the key components/processes of most supply chains as follows: material suppliers, production facilities, distribution services including wholesalers and retailers, and customers, who are linked together via forwards flow of materials and backwards feedback flows of information. Obviously the authors are not referring to any supply chain network but only to the components of a very simple product supply chain. What about the supply chain of company, which cope only with services? Furthermore there are a number of actors and jobs/activities (e.g. finance & accounting, customer service, product/service developments, forecasting, etc) that exist between and within the supply chain components described by these authors. This is due to the fact that every supply chain system is unique and it has its own special characteristics, participants, processes and complexities. For example, the supply chain of a paper-clip manufacturer is totally different from the supply chain of an aircraft manufacturer. In the first case (paper-clip manufacturer) the production and the distribution of the product are quite straightforward and uncomplicated processes (e.g. not many participants, not specialised raw materials, etc), whereas in the second case of the aircraft manufacturer, the complexity and the specialisation of the product requires the involvement of different companies, processes, technologies and jobs. However for the needs of this research it would be meaningful to present some of the supply chains' processes-activities, as found in the majority of business organisations. So, some of the core processes-activities of most supply chains are: purchasing, procurement, resources/supplies management, storing-distribution-transportation, production-manufacturing, inventory, ordering-selling-invoicing, customer service, contacting, and forecasting (There is not one source to this sentence. It is personal knowledge that has been obtained after reading a number of articles, books, etc). Effective SCM requires the organisational information and knowledge to be transmitted and shared beyond the companies' physical boundaries; the narrow focus of managers and the adversarial relationships of the past between manufacturers, suppliers, logistics providers and customers are replaced with strategic alliances, partnerships and every kind of long-term cooperative business relationships. Thus suppliers, customers and in some cases even competitors are viewed as partners; all these SCM business practices, were very uncommon two or three decades ago, where organisations were acting "individually" and were doing business without taking into serious account the key role of their supply chains associates. (Patterson et al, 2003; Sousa et al, 2001; Roberts & MacKay, 1998) But what makes companies and people being so interested on the subject of supply chain management? Why should supply chain processes, jobs and members be managed by organisations? In the author's opinion there are two main driving forces behind this trend. The first is the large pressures caused by the highly competitive and complex market-environments (e.g. price wars between companies; shorter product life-cycles; customers become more demanding which makes products/services more complex-more customisation needed) that organisations operate today; flexibility, responsiveness and adeptness to market changes (e.g. changes in demand, changes in customers preferences) are only some of the mechanisms that modern companies should have today in order to survive and stay competitive; and the second is of course the big benefits and advantages offered to organisations when they make effective SCM. Among the benefits and opportunities provided to organisations by managing effectively and in a more collaborative way their supply chains are: better efficiencies and effectiveness of all the actors/jobs involved in a supply chain; enhanced productivities; production and delivery of higher quality of products/services; decreased time deliveries; overall improvement and increase in the machine and assets' utilisation; drastic cost reductions; customer satisfaction; higher degrees of innovativeness and organisational flexibility; increased profitability; and generally the creation of economies of scale for companies. (Narasimham and Kim, 2001; Fisher, 1997; DeJarnett, 2002) Overall it is apparent that nowadays, effective supply chain management has become a great source of gaining competitive advantages in the marketplace; it is not accidental that prominent academics and practitioners argue that markets competition is not any longer between companies to companies but between supply chains to supply chains. (Gossman, 1997; Barki, 1993) So, the player(s) who manage(s) with the most collaborative and the most effective way its/their supply chain processes is/are going to be the market champion(s). Information Technologies/Systems for SCM IT/IS is the linkage of all the activities, processes and actors that are implicated in a supply chain network; and as Edwards et al (2001) in their paper refer, IT/IS is the "glue" that holds together, and integrates all the supply chain pieces, processes and associated formations (e.g. partnerships, strategic alliances). Some other authors such as Prahalad and Krishman (1999) refer to IT/IS as the "digital nervous system" of a company's supply chain. Today IT/IS are used extensively by companies for both intra and inter organisational integration and coordination of their supply chains. The collaboration, communication and data exchange between different departments and divisions within a company (e.g. between the purchasing and the manufacturing departments) as well as between trading partners (always on the basis of SCM), has been tremendously facilitated by the very effective, economical, fast and efficient IT/IS advances/developments in this area. Looking briefly at the literature regarding this area now, it can be argued that there is a large number of articles, researches, books and other sources that focus on the subject of IT/IS for SCM. According to Fisher (2000) never has so much research and brainpower been applied to improving supply chain-performance/management by using the power of IT/IS. Academics, consultants and vendors are all dealing with this growing issue and stress their own understandings, from their own points of view about if, how and what IT/IS initiatives should be used for managing and improving the performance of supply chains. As a result contradictions and disputes are a common affair in this area. So for instance, while most vendors and consultants insist that the only way for a company to obtain an effective SCM is to buy and implement new technologies and software packages, most academics appear to be less convinced about the actual outcomes, for example, most academics used to express their concerns and anxieties about the huge implementation costs associated with the introduction of SCM technologies in business organisations, and the advantages that technology alone can provide for SCM. However these kinds of arguments and contrasting views will not be discussed at this point. Suffice is to say that the only aspect that is generally accepted and fixed in almost every study regarding IT/IS for SCM (and thus in this study) is that IT/IS is an essential component for every successful SCM, as characteristically five prominent researchers of this area refer in their works, Mabert & Venkataramanan (1998), Barut; Faist & Kanet (2002); in nowadays the backbone for the SCM is that kind of technologies, which are used to acquire, process, coordinate, and transmit information among multiple supply chain partners for the benefit and advantage of all, and that the overall benefits resulting from the IT/IS usage for SCM can be tremendous for companies. Among the SCM advantages offered to the companies, by the usage of such IT/IS are: the fewer errors and the higher overall quality of the exchanging data/information (between trading partners), the elimination of time from product/service development & design until market introduction, the better management of stocks, the high responsiveness as well as flexibility in circumstantial changes, the reduction of uncertainties (e.g. of markets demand), the enhancement of sourcing decisions, increased companies ability to compete both domestically and internationally, the creation of strong trading relationships (e.g. with suppliers, partners), the improvement of the customer services (greater customer loyalty as well as customer satisfaction), the increases in companies profitability, and generally IT/IS provide a big range of tools and opportunities for better supply chain communication and coordination. (Lago & Fischmann, 1999; Lancioni et al, 2000) It is characteristic that prominent authors like Cachon and Fisher (2000), Lee et al (2000), Lewis and Talalayevsky (1997), and Bourland et al (1996) whose works are focused on IT/IS for SCM, have even attempted to provide percentages about the benefits that companies gain when they employ IT/IS for their SCM, and conversely the losses/difficulties that companies have in their SCM when they do not use any of the IT/IS advances. Hence, for example, by considering real cases and situations in their researches, found that in a supply chain network the information sharing processes by using modern information technologies, "reduces supply chain costs by 2.2% on average" in comparison to the traditional supply chain networks. In the same way Gavirneni et al (2000, p.1033) found that a company that shares information and data with its suppliers can "cut supply chain's costs from 1% up to 35%". However, because the above authors in their researches have taken for granted different assumptions, industries, organisations and analytical methods, in their studies, it would not be a sensible course of action to compare and accept their conclusions about the benefits offered for SCM by the usage of IT/IS. But what does not allow us to compare and comment on those studies, is that their authors have taken into consideration different Information Technologies/Systems for SCM, which apparently have different advantages, disadvantages, characteristics, focal points, implications and thus dissimilar effects on organisations' supply chains. So for example, there are technologies that have been designed for and thus can be used only by very big companies; there are IS/IT that just can automate and speed up the processes and jobs of a supply chain; there are IT/IS, which can be used only for the automation or the integration of just one SCM process (e.g. an IT/IS for inventory management); there are technologies that are employed exclusively for the integration only of the internal supply chain's processes/activities (e.g. integration of purchasing, ordering, warehouse, manufacturing, etc); there are technologies that connect and integrate the supply chain activities of two or more organisations; and finally, there are technologies that can alter radically the supply chains of organisations and put into practice their own way/philosophy of managing and running supply chains (e.g. Off the shelf software packages for SCM). The Development And The Introduction of IT/IS in SCM Starting with the introduction of the IT/IS in the management of supply chains, the reader must go back to the early 1970's where companies started to realise the advantages and overall benefits of integrating their internal (take place only within companies) supply chain processes. Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is the first known IT/IS initiative designed mostly for integrating some internal jobs in the supply chains of the manufacturing companies. In its basic form MRP system is a computer program that identifies and then validates the quantity of manufactured product(s) that needs to be produced in a specific time period by a company. In the late 70's, early 80's the MRP has been massively modified from its initial design and as a result MRP vendors renamed the system to MRP II. MRP systems have developed and improved to become fully integrated interactive systems capable of carrying out multi-site global applications. However, the increasing need of companies for further integration of their internal supply chain processes could not be covered by the MRP systems any longer, and as a result a new generation of IT/IS was developed, the so-called Enterprise Resourse Planning (ERP) systems. Those systems are basically an evolution of the MRPs, and have been built up by using the principles of business process reengineering (BPR), the notion of which was to uncover, adopt and ultimately implement the industry's "best practices" to an organisation. ERPs offer great integration opportunities to all sorts of organisations (profit and non-profit) that make use of such systems and are able to support most aspects of their internal information needs. (Davenport, 2000; Ghiassi & Spera, 2003) Since 1970's companies around the world have spent billions of US dollars on both MRP and ERP systems in order to achieve the complete automation of their internal processes. In effect, what companies managed, was to create huge, but still very "isolated islands of automation". (Furst and Schmidt 2001) So, although companies had achieved very high levels of internal efficiency and productivity, the dynamic interaction and collaboration between them and their customers, suppliers, and generally all the members of their supply chains, was slow and very inefficient. Companies had constructed two kinds/pieces of supply chains, the internal and the external; or in other words, the back office supply chain functions and the front office supply chain functions. In the back office supply chain functions are included processes such as warehousing, manufacturing and product development and in the front office supply chain functions are included processes like purchasing, order management, suppliers' management, customer service, billing, etc. MRPs, ERPs and other similar systems could not integrate and connect both the internal and the external supply chain processes of companies, given that those systems had been designed (initially at least) exclusively for internal integration and intra-companies data exchanging. As a result, in the late 80's, time delays, distorted demand signals, poor visibility, disorders, misinformation, disintegration, increased supply chain costs and customer dissatisfaction were common courses in the supply chain of most companies. Companies were looking for an effective way to manage and integrate in totality their supply chain activities and transactions from the first stage/process of product/service development till the last stage/process of their supply chains-the after sales customer support; and from the first participant of their supply chains-the supplier of their supplier till the last participant-the end customers of their customers. The need (e.g. reduce supply chain costs, eliminate delivery times, etc) and the market pressures (e.g. shorter product life-cycles; complex products/services; difficult and more demanding customers) for intra and inter-companies collaboration as well as data sharing beyond any physical organisational boundaries, was continually increasing. Simple technologies like the phone and the fax were not sufficient to facilitate the collaboration and the integration of the new, emerging organisational forms such as strategic alliances; partnerships; virtual, federated and interstitial organisations, etc. Conclusion The IT/IS vendor, there are issues such as ways of designing, selling, implementing (e.g. Big-Bang, Incremental), and supporting an IT/IS for SCM; those issues are also different from vendor to vendor. In the third category, the environment, are involved issues like market conditions, uncertainties, trends, competition, etc; which are changing from time periods to time periods, from industry to industry, from company to company, etc. Finally in the fourth category, the organisation, issues like culture, people, norms, practices, symbols, power structures, control systems, rituals and routines, history, size, strategy, industry, products/services, customers, suppliers, supply chain, technology, market, skills, expertise, financial situation, stakeholders, threats and opportunities have been put, which are all different from organisation to organisation. So, the combination of those factors/actors makes every case of IT/IS for SCM to be unique, and can influence it either negatively or positively. In other words can make it either a success (totally/partially) or a failure. In order to become more comprehensive about how those factors/issues and their combination can influence the success or to the failure of an IT/IS for SCM, an exploration will take place of two well-known but quite contrasting cases of organisations, which have selected, implemented and run IT/IS for achieving effective SCM. The first case is that of Hershey, the US colossal chocolate maker, which has been considered as a huge failure, whereas the second case is that of the US apparel company ARAMARK, which has been considered by both academics and practitioners as being very successful in this field. Overall, it can be hold that IT/IS for SCM are just some tools that can be used by any organisation for achieving effective management of its supply chain. IT/IS vendors offer a large range of such IT/IS for the supply chain of every company, industry and organisational formation (e.g. partnership, strategic alliances, etc). 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