SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Essay.

1. Differentiate Qualitative Measures from Quantitative Measures.

 Supply chain performance measure is an approach to judge the performance of
supply chain system. It is classified into two categories namely qualitative
measures and quantitative measures. Qualitative measures refers to the qualities
that are descriptive, subjective, and difficult to measure. It measures the quality
rather than the quantity. Qualitative measures include customer satisfaction and
product quality. On the contrary, quantitative measures refers to the
assessments used to measure the performance, and compare or track the
performance or products. It may include order-to-delivery lead time, supply chain
response time, flexibility, resource utilization, and delivery performance.

2. Discuss the three main decision phases of supply chain.

 The decision phases of supply chain is defined as the different stages involved in
supply chain management for taking an action or decision related to some
products or services. The first phase is the supply chain strategy which is the
decision taken by the higher authority or the senior management. The decision to
be made in this phase considers the sections like long term prediction that’s why
it is very important to study both the prevailing and future conditions of the
market at this stage. Supply chain strategy includes deciding manufacturing the
material, factory location, location of warehouses and many more. The second
phase is supply chain planning. This phase includes all starting from predicting
the market demand to which market will be provided the finished goods to which
plant is planned. Supply chain planning should be done according to the
demand and supply view, and a market research should be done to understand
customer’s demands. Furthermore, awareness and updated information about
the competitors and the strategies they used should also be considered in this
stage. And lastly, the third decision phase is the supply chain operations. This
phase consists of various functional decisions that are to be made instantly such
as within minutes, hours, or days. The objective of this stage is to minimize
uncertainty and perform optimization. Everything is included in this stage, starting
from handling the customer order up to supplying the customer with that product.

3. What is strategic sourcing?

 Strategic sourcing is the collective and organized approach to supply chain
management that defines the way information is gathered and used so that an
organization can leverage its consolidated purchasing power to find the best
possible values in the marketplace. Strategic sourcing is said to be organized
because of the necessity of some methodology or process. And it is said to be
collective because one of the most essential necessities for any successful
strategic sourcing attempt is of receiving operational components, apart from the
procurement, engaged in the decision-making and assessment process.