Supply Chain Management : Defination

Supply Chain: My definition of supply chain can be briefly explained as follows

• Supply chain is simply the multi-staged bidirectional movement of various entities from a resource to consumer.
• The resource-consumer at different stages are different like supplier-manufacturer, manufacturer-distributer, distributor-end user, factory-warehouse etc.
• The entities includes
• physical material (Raw material, WIP, Finished goods, defective goods, waste material, tools and equipment, packaging material etc.)
• Financial aids like material cost, credit, payments, ownership
• Information like schedules, delivery status, material tracking etc.
• Transportation and Logistic, production / assembly lines (material movement related entities)

Thus Supply Chain Management (SCM) Can be defined as Managing the magnitude (quantity) and direction of various entities involved throughout the supply chain, in order to achieve optimum cost efficiency and maximum customer satisfaction.