Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the process of planning the various steps required to define a complete production and delivery system, which ultimately brings profits for the company. The process of SCM starts from defining the market needs to delivery of product to the customer. To define the supply chain management the company uses various tools and techniques.
Planning: The need for supply should be defined through a research conducted on the market condition. Firstly, the market's demand for a product should be analysed and then the planning should be made to design or manufacture a product at a low cost as per customer's need.
Select vendors to buy raw material: To design or manufacture a product or a service, you need raw material or semi manufactured goods, to manufacture your product. To buy products at a low cost, you will have to make a list of vendors and compare the prices of the vendors. The product and its pricing will be added to the inventory list, which will be sanctioned by the authority. To make entries to inventory management, the modules to receive the shipments, the metrics of store, the verification from senior authority and transfer record of products has to be maintained.
Manufacturing: In the supply chain management procedure, the main process is manufacturing, where the item is produced and tested against the various quality levels defined by the company. The workers productivity is also defined and workers shifts are defined in this module. The workers performance and salary is linked to the HR module and the payroll module of the software.
Packaging: The packaging and delivery of shipments to the buyer is done at this level. The complete performance analysis of the production units can be defined after the delivery of packets.
Delivery: In the delivery module, the address of the customer or the units where the packaged product is delivered is entered.
Receiving defective items: A small but significant module of SCM is the receiving module, where the number of all the defective pieces returned by the customer is recorded and the items are resent to the production or inventory as per the guidelines of the senior authority.
1. The main function of SCM software is to depict the complete flow of making a product from the initial phase of analyzing market demands to manufacturing, inventory maintenance, packaging, distribution and supply.
2. Supply chain management software cannot run individually, but the processes of SCM are integrated with other modules of ERP such as CRM, Finance and HR Management. Accurate supply chain management software helps a company to speed up the production and manufacturing processes to get the just-in-time manufacturing, which ultimately brings profits to the company.
3. SCM software helps a company to prevent excess buying and reduces inventory.
To implement SCM the company should first define its needs and then buy suitable SCM software or ERP to fulfil its needs.
