Supply Chain Management - What Is Involved

When we visit a supermarket and pick various products from the shelves, most of us never think about how those products got there in the first place. We simply load our shopping carts with our favorite items and head for the counter. But did you know that an army of men and women working for a series of companies were involved in getting those products from the factory production line onto your supermarket shelves? The process is known as supply chain management and is a highly complex process involving logistics.

Once a product is manufactured in a factory, it first needs to be transported to the primary distributor. The primary distributor might have a warehouse from which the products would then be moved to the secondary distributor. Warehousing is a process where the goods are stored safely in the right environment before they are needed at another point in the supply chain. Warehousing might also be required when goods need to be stored before being shipped off to another country or region that is far from the place of manufacture.

Transportation would play a huge role in moving goods from one location to another in the distribution process. Goods moved from the factory to the warehouse would normally require huge transportation equipment since it is less expensive to move them in larger quantities at a time. From the warehouse to the final distribution points like supermarkets, shopping malls and grocery stores, the products would normally be moved using smaller vehicles.

A number of different services would be involved in each stage of the supply chain process and most of these services are outsourced to different agents. However, some companies provide supply chain management services by having access to several different third party service providers and coordinating them effectively to get the goods from the factory production line right up to supermarket shelf.

They also offer supply chain consulting services to chain stores that need to streamline their processes for better productivity and larger profits. Transportation itself is a huge subsystem that involves proper fleet management using owned or rented vehicles.

Supermarkets and chain stores can hire the services of supply chain mobility companies to optimize their processes through proper planning and management. Since these services have centralized access to suppliers, distributors and warehousing service providers, they can effectively take care of the entire gamut of tasks involved in the bring the products from the manufacturer to the retailer.

Please click here to know more details about what is supply chain management. An article for SAP Singapore project by Scotts DIGITAL - One of the top marketing firms that specialised in branding your business using SEO.