Task:
Supply Chain Management (SCM) has been a popular buzzword since the mid 1990s, and has had many variations of definition by many experts. It's now buzzed over to Canbide and is the topic of debate at the weekly analysts' meeting. What is your definition of Supply Chain Management?
There are various definitions available such as it being a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers. Thus supply chains exist in both service and manufacturing organizations. The complexity of the chain may vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm but is the same in overall concept. And it has three general components of:
1 Demand Fulfillment-The objective of the demand fulfillment process is to provide fast, accurate, and reliable delivery-date responses to customer orders. Demand Fulfillment is mainly an execution-level sub-process that includes order capturing, customer verification, order promising, backlogs management, and order fulfillment.
2 Demand Planning-The objective of the demand planning process is to understand customers' buying patterns and develop aggregate, collaborative forecasts. Demand planning is by definition a planning process, which feeds into the supply planning process, and subsequently the demand fulfillment process. Demand planning involve long-term, intermediate-term and short-term time horizons.
3 Supply Planning-The objective of the Supply Planning process is to optimally position enterprise resources to meet demand. This is a planning-level sub-process that spans the strategic and tactical supply-planning processes. Long-term planning, inventory planning, distribution planning, collaborative procurement, transportation planning and supply allocation are all part of this sub-process
Lastly there are major challenges:
Making products or services available in a cost-effective manner with the desired quality.
Making sure information is available easily to run the supply chain
However, your insight/perspective I find educational/inspiring thus I am forwarding this question to you for your perspective on the task if you have time and availability.
Scenario:
You have been promoted to senior analyst in the Distribution Engineering, Maintenance, and Productions Management group of the Central Engineering Department of the Canbide Corporation, near Torrance, CA. At this location is a facility for the electronics business. Based upon your previous successes in the electronics division, you will now spend most of your time with the chemical plants.
The Canbide Corporation is a U.S.-based, multi-national, publicly traded, manufacturing company with annual sales nearing $10 billion. Canbide is one of the pioneers of the petrochemical industry and is the acknowledged technology leader in several market sectors, and benefits from large licensing royalty checks for those technologies. Canbide is the low cost producer for a number of commodity products. Canbide's current marketing approach is based on providing a wide selection of products from a single location, more than any of their competitors.
In a suburb of Tulsa, OK, Canbide operates a facility for the Chemical Business Group, which contains the Divisional Research and Engineering Department (DRE), the experts on the specific reactions and equipment associated with that division's production processes, and the Central Central Engineering and Research Department (CERG), experts in specific subjects that cross divisional boundaries. The employees in CERG generally work as internal consultants for the divisional research and engineering groups and often work on plant level issues.
Mr. Villani, president of the Chemicals Business Group, is pressing his divisional VPs to solve several problems. There is internal pressure for a new distribution facility in the Midwest. There continue to be quality problems at a facility near Toledo, OH that serves the automotive market in Michigan. There are customer service problems at most of the distribution locations, but especially at a facility near Denver, CO. There are inventory and materials handling problems at the production facility near Huntsville, AL.
Your supervisor has alerted you to three important projects for the coming year.
Product Quality and Distribution Problems at the Denver facility: This facility has experienced slow physical growth since its beginning in the 1930s. Over the years, new production units (measuring 2 km x 1 km) have been added on the periphery of the facility, in a widely scattered manner. Unfortunately, your previous recommendations regarding customer service have not yet been implemented due to budgetary constraints; customers desiring to pickup multiple products must now drive from point to point within the plant to pick up each product. There are often waiting lines at each loading point. This is causing gridlock within the facility caused by the arrival pattern of trucks picking up products. In addition, there are product quality problems, primarily due to new rules that the automotive industry (ISO 9000) is imposing on all of their suppliers.
New Distribution Facility in the Northeast: For years, long before you joined Canbide, the Divisional Sales and Marketing Departments have clamored for a new distribution facility located near New York to serve many customers throughout the Northeast. Previous studies have always indicated that the benefits of a New York location are outweighed by the costs. In spite of this, you are being asked to take another look.
A Quality Program for CERG: With the increasing prevalence of ISO 9000 programs, Canbide has initiated a corporate wide Excellence through Quality (EQ) program. Most of the plants and operational locations have already launched their EQ programs. Now, Mr. Harkins, the VP of Central Engineering and Research Group (CERG), has picked you to help develop and implement the EQ program for his corporate level engineering and R&D groups.