Supply Chain Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 9

Supply Chain Management - Essay Example so allow them to supply to the market as quickly and precisely as possible in order to meet the actual demand without being able to consider maintaining a high inventory level. When there is high inventory, there is also high linked up cost with it. Thus, the prevailing structural program of Dell with respect to its recent supply chain strategy ensures a great way of generation of profit as the entire activity minimizes the loss of market opportunity. In other words, the ability of Dell to forecast demand allows it to provide the essential supply to its target marketplace. In order to do this, the company relies heavily on information by maintaining constant flow of data through two information loops (Oracle, 2013). This means that the flow of information should take place between customers and Dell sales team and the other one takes place among sales, procurement and suppliers (Oracle, 2013). Supply chain could be defined as a set of two or more entities involved in the upstream and downstream flow of products, services, finances and information from the source to a consumer (Overbeck, 2009, p.17). It is upstream from the point of view of consumer and the other way around for the source. This definition gives us the idea that the flow of products, services and information is sequential, which means that the output of the first level is the input of the next level. However, due to the existing complexity of relationships involved in the supply chain today, ‘supply network’ was coined (Overbeck, 2009, p.17). According to Hieber (2002), the nature of supply chain is unique (p.130). This is because there is complexity involved within the flow of goods and information between the linked entities in the supply chain. This according to him would require a changing set of priorities from time to time, requiring a high level of responsiveness on the part of the organisation. According to Jones and Tilley (2007), supply chains and management have become potential