Supply chain management - Essay Example

Maintaining an effective and critical supply chain has become critical today. Global disruptions and market changes have instilled a sense of fear in businesses as maintaining strong customer relationships and effective cost cutting has become necessary (Sapient, 2002). Many firms started outsourcing key business process as a means to have better control over the supply chain. This could not resolve the problem and on the contrary it added to business and communication complexity. This increases the dependence on business partners (Sapient, 2002).

Supply chains today face innumerable barriers like multiple tiers, many suppliers, varied transportation modes and numerous outsourcing partners, according to the report by Sapient. Uncertainties arise as multiple players with diverse technological backgrounds and systems join hands to integrate supply chain activities (Lippert & Forman, 2006). Supply chain uncertainties can also disturb the other planned processes to accommodate delayed assembly or delay may occur if a suitable resource cannot be found (Koh & Tan, 2005).

Despite the use of various strategic planning models, uncertainties have been identified in the system. Uncertainties should not be underestimated as its impact can lead to faulty planning. It could also prevent the company from taking advantage of the opportunities that higher levels of uncertainty provide. It thus becomes imperative to understand the various view points underpinning the theory of uncertainty in supply chain. Uncertainty has been defined by Ambrose, Marshall and Lynch (2006) as the absence of the information that the organization needs in order to operate effectively while Koh and Tan (2005) define it as any unpredictable event that occurs during the production process that cannot be planned for.

It is a disturbance and creates nervousness. They further clarify that regardless of the way