What Is Supply Chain Management?

what is supply chain management

Supply chain management is management of the flow of goods, data, and finances related to a product or service, from the procurement of raw materials to the delivery of the product at its final destination. This has become increasingly more crucial to the success of business operations over the past few years.

Great supply chain management provides clarity of movement from one point to another and delivers it on time. It ensures that the product is of good quality, available when customers need it, and cost-effective for companies.

How Does Supply Chain Management (SCM) Work?

The process of SCM can be divided into three flows:

The product flow: This flow concerns the movement of products from the supplier to the customer. It involves planning and organizing how products will move through the production, storage, and delivery processes. This flow also ensures that all products meet customers’ expectations.

The information flow: This flow oversees how orders are received and communicated with suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders. It keeps track of information needed on the product flow, such as price, quantity, and timing. The product and finance flow relies on the accuracy of the information flow.

Get Started With A Free Demo

The finance flow: This flow is the financial aspect of supply chain management. It deals with payment transactions between suppliers and customers. It also tracks cash flows, payments, settlements, and currency conversions.

What Are the Five Parts of Supply Chain Management?

Logistics and supply chain management consist of five distinct parts, and these are:

Planning: This part forecasts customer demand and planning for production, inventory control, and transportation.

Sourcing: This is the process of finding, evaluating, and selecting suppliers who will provide the goods and services needed.

Manufacturing: This is the production and assembly process of goods from suppliers and components.

Delivering: This is the process of getting goods to customers on time. This includes transportation and logistics, inventory management, and order fulfillment.

Returning: Customers don’t always keep their products. Returning is the process of handling damaged or defective items, returns and refunds, and reselling them.

How Can You Improve Your Supply Chain?

If you’re suffering from a disorganized supply chain, here are a few tips to help you improve it:

Establish better information flow: As mentioned, the information flow is vital for the other two flows to function correctly. It’s essential to have a clear line of communication between suppliers, customers, and stakeholders.

Outsource other processes: For businesses with limited resources, outsourcing certain procedures can help them streamline their operations. Outsourcing tasks like inventory management and order fulfillment can save time for core business functions.

Utilize supply chain management software: Technology can be a great way to automate and track processes. Good supply chain management software will help you monitor the product, information, and finance flow in real time.

Supply Chain Management Solutions

BlueGrace’s end-to-end logistics solutions help businesses improve their supply chain management for a better outcome. Make your supply chain more effective and keep your customers satisfied with BlueGrace.

See how your business can leverage technology to optimize your logistics.

Book a Demo

See how your business can leverage technology to optimize your logistics.

Book a Demo

The BlueShip® Platform

LTL Rating

Simplify your LTL with the proprietary BlueShip Rating Engine built for speed, accuracy, and performance. This LTL rating engine delivers thousands of rates in seconds through a single instance platform - so you can quote with confidence. As an open platform, it allows for an easy and accessible API with a software development kit available.

BOOK A DEMO
Multi-Modal Support

Built on a modern tech-stack with software products designed to support an increasing amount of transportation and modes. Full truckload, less-than-truckload, refrigerated, temperature controlled, flatbed, intermodal and more. BlueShip TMS is designed with flexibility and customization to support multiple modes and multiple integrations that provide the highest level of visibility across your supply chain.

LEARN MORE
Freight Tracking and Visibility

Having complete visibility to your freight is a necessity. With the BlueShip platform, you'll have access to built-in tracking, making it effortless to see where your freight is, every step of the way.

LEARN MORE
Predictive Analytics, Actionable Data & Meaningful Insights

BlueShip drives value through understanding, comprehending, and visualizing your logistics network data. Based on highly clean and accurate data, this gives you deep visibility across your supply chain. It allows for AI and machine learning, as well as predictive and prescriptive decision support analytics to build resilience, prepare for disruption and increase operations efficiency.

DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER
TMS
TMS