Supply Chain: The Important Phase Of An Industry

By Author: Vijay K Shetty
Total Articles: 2541
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Supply Chain Management is a key activity in many manufacturing and service organizations and is an important link in an Industry. It basically refers to the process, activities, people, organisations, technology, resources and information involved in the moving a product or service from a supplier to a customer. Here the customer refers to a business organisation who acts as a consumer. Hence we can also say that supply chain acts as an intermediate between the suppliers and the value chain of the company.

Since India is fast catching up with injection of latest technology in its manufacturing processes, SCM plays a critical role. This means to say that SCM also gives rise to many job profiles which never existed earlier. Looking at India's growth one can say the opportunities in this area are immense. One can start his career in the Supply Chain by offering services as a logistic planner. Job profiles with respect to buyer (who decides on what and where to buy), negotiator (negotiates on the price of the raw materials) and Quality Analyst (who checks for the Quality of in the input elements) are on the rise for freshers.

Moreover, ...
... Supply Chains has also created 2 new job profiles for the middle level n top level employees in an organization— Operational Decision Makers(ODM) and Strategic Decision Makers(SDM). ODM are fit into jobs which needs them to make short term decisions regarding the product flow and other day-to-day activities. On the other hand, SDM need to make decisions with respect to Inventory, Production, Location and Distribution.

The inventory DM is expected to decide on the existing inventory which can be either raw materials or semi-Finished goods or Finished Goods. The location DM is expected to decide on the placement and number of Production facilities and Inventory points. The production DM is expected to decide on what and how much to produce. The distribution DM decides on the mode of cheapest and safest transport to procure the raw materials.

Since the job in a supply chain requires an employee to have a thorough understanding about the organisation and also the other activities of the organisation, it is quite riskier. For e.g. A mistake in the quality of material procured will affect the production quality, sales and in turn the whole company's profit. So this is the reason for the middle level and top level management to decide on the activities involved in the supply chain. If you are really a thinker and customer focused person, then a career in Supply Chain is the ultimate choice.

Skills required by an SCM employee would be:

1. Exposure to any of the SCM tools like Clear Case, Perforce, PVCS, CVS etc.

2. Desire to work with the people

3. Analytic skills

4. Relation-Building Skills

5. Negotiating Skills

6. Adaptive to changing business and market conditions

Hence to conclude a Job profile in SCM always is challenging and has no routinized process and process of procurement, negotiating and decision making is unique and a new experience.

Vijay K Shetty, Platinum Level Author.
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