https:\/\/www.instituteforsupplymanagement.org\/pubs\/Proceedings\/confproceedingsdetail.cfm?ItemNumber=11813&SSO=1<\/a><\/p>\nAs we know from class, there are many different definitions for a supply chain, but Crimi and Kauffman define it as \u201can integrative approach to managing supply and distribution networks.\u201d\u00a0 Further, they define a supply chain in terms of the competitive advantages it seeks to achieve for the company or organization it is associated with.\u00a0 Within the various competitive advantages are what can be considered the supply chain\u2019s core competencies.\u00a0 As defined by Crimi and Kauffman, \u201ccore competencies can be defined as those activities that a firm does best and most cost-effectively, and which are central or \u2018core\u2019 to success in its business.\u201d\u00a0 These core competencies are achieved through effective supply chain management and, more importantly, the specific design of the supply chain.<\/p>\n
This is why Crimi and Kauffman assert that \u201cfirms don\u2019t compete, supply chains do . . . how supply chains are designed will affect their ability to compete.\u201d\u00a0 For example, a firm that is attempting to compete in a market where low cost determines who gets the business will have difficulty if it includes high cost suppliers in its supply chain. The characteristics of the end-market in which a firm is competing must be considered when designing supply chains.<\/p>\n
So how are supply chains designed? What are the steps taken to design a successful supply chain?\u00a0 The first step is straight forward: \u201cselect a chain.\u201d\u00a0 Decide where in the market you want to operate, what you want to sell, or what aspect of the already existing business model you want to improve\/re-design.\u00a0 The next step is to \u201cform a design team,\u201d including stakeholders from inside and outside of the organization.\u00a0 Next, \u201cmap the chain as a team,\u201d or, in other words, get everyone on the same page and reach a common understanding on what each member\u2019s role is in the supply chain.\u00a0 After organizing and defining, the team must \u201cdetermine supply chain performance criteria,\u201d which can be cost, quality, time, reliability, flexibility, or other \u201cspecific product performance characteristics.\u201d\u00a0 This is the critically important stage in the supply chain design process where the competitive priority is identified.\u00a0 Next, the supply chain management team must \u201canalyze each step of the selected supply chain.\u201d\u00a0 After analysis, the team must \u201cevaluate the impact of changes from existing practice needed to perform each step in the supply chain as a whole.\u201d\u00a0 Finally, the last step of the supply chain design process is to \u201creiterate the preceding process until the combination of practices that best meets the supply chain performance criteria is determined.\u201d\u00a0 This last step echoes what we have already talked about in class as the importance of continual improvement and constant reevaluation.<\/p>\n
What do you all think of Crimi and Kauffman\u2019s paper? What part of the supply chain design process do you think is the most important? Is there anything you would add their design process?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When researching supply chain design for this blog post topic, I found an insightful and informative academic paper from the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2366,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[71157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-designing-supply-chains"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mgmt340-05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}