Designing and Managing the Supply Chain

Operations management incorporates design of products, their processes, management, supply chains and services. The resources are acquired, developed and used with a view to satisfying the client’s expectations. It is the way a company or organization produces goods or goods or services by way of converting the resources available as inputs, be it raw materials, customers or even information, by use of the transformers including the facilities or the staff.

The supply chain operation level management involves the distribution planning and production operations to ensure a continuous flow of finished goods and intermediate products, and their distribution to the customers. These are in existence to both service and manufacturing industries where their complexity varies with the firm or industry involved. The supply chains may have multiple end products where different things like facilities and capacities may be shared and the cost of the same may be very large. There are several supply chain management processes that are in the category of the operational level these are the customer service which deal with the real time availability of the customers product, strategic procurement that entails the supplier and the company effective communication and coordination on all their activities to ensure that both of them benefit from their trading, supplier connectivity and order fulfillment to customers and linking them to the effort in marketing, portfolio management where the products quality is developed and the lower profit products get a reduced attention, sales cycle efficiency and manufacturing flow.

Manufacturing flow is a study of the activities in planning, scheduling and the support of all the activities involved in the operations of manufacturing like handling, storage, logistics and inventory optimization. The processes are interlinked and flexible. They should operate at consistent levels to provide a smooth flow for efficiency, faster response to customers order and to ensure that these demands are met in time as the customer required them and therefore the supply chain can be used as a global weapon for competition.

This is a process that has several departments interlinked to complete the process from the supplier until the consumer is reached its extrapolation is almost like the improved process but there is multitasking especially in the sales department as they are assumed to know the stock of goods required and the amount of sales to be done The process may bring confusion and slow delivery of services if the department is to handle all of them together. There is no division of labor and a lot of manual work is involved, the computerization process has not been adopted yet whilst this would have eradicated the work load for the processing of orders and the reorder quantity would be easily identifiable.

 A supply chain transformation strategy can be adapted as this will interlink the suppliers to the manufacturers and customers as well to a complex network to achieve total satisfaction of all the parties involved. Accurate and relevant information will be accessible which will result to reduced costs, more output, and reduced inventory, shorter time between order and delivery as well as higher services to customers through the use of the internet to communicate, either in placing orders or in payment of the same and this will have far much reaching benefits as the information flow will be speeded up thus making it more effective. Competitive advantage will be gained when the right channel is used to relay information to the right people at the right time and in the form in which they require this information and this may lead to the control of the market.

This is an improved manufacturing supply chain where the different departments are involved in the production and distribution of a product. The sales department identifies an increase in the demand of a certain product and duly informs the marketing section. With the information, data or knowledge provided; the marketers involve the analysts who further carry out a research so as to second the project after which they send back the feedback to the marketing department so as to complete the business plan (Simchi-Levi 53). The completed business plan is sent to the manager or the directors for verification and approval. When this is done and the plan succeeds, it is returned to analysts for the implementation of the plan.

Details of these plans pertaining to the raw materials or things to be procured are passed on to the purchasing department which in collaboration with the logistics plan on how and when to buy these requirements. The transport department then ensures that these materials arrive to the manufacturing section in time for production. Orders are with suppliers showing all the details required plus the date the materials are to be dispatched. These are received and stored in the warehouse specifically built for raw materials after which they are taken for manufacturing then stored in a finished goods warehouse. The customer service receives orders from customers and keys them in the computer system. The order is then processed and sent to the warehouse where the goods are to be picked (Hines 23). A copy of this is retained by the export department to prepare the documents to accompany the goods during exportation. These are sent after a short span to the warehouse to join up with the completed order for the final dispatch of the goods.

The transport company according to the term transports the goods to their destination. Whilst the stock has reduced, the system processes a new order for stock which is picked by the reorder department and sent to the purchasing department who link with suppliers to request for more stock .this process ensures that there is no time lag between two processes as everything is coordinated and there is no multitasking that brings about confusion. Everybody is placed to task to ensure that he performs his role to the best of knowledge and ability. There is specialization and division of labor so that the continuity of performance of a single task over time will bring about perfection and optimization of the overall objective.

The computerized system has reduced the paper work and the manual labor that was there. The result of this is efficiency and effectiveness as the speed of order processing is faster, documentation and retrieval of the same, takes a short time and little space is required to perform the same task. There will be easy referencing in the future and will ensure that there is reduced duplication of efforts and tasks.