The Importance Of Supply Chain Strategy

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Introduction
Supply chain strategy recognized as an importance from the early days of supply chain management (Stevens, 1989). There is a great deal of distraction regarding exactly what supply chain management involves. Indeed, many people using the term supply chain management handle it as a synonym for logistics or as logistics that includes customers and suppliers (Simchi, David, Kaminski, and Edith 2000). Others view supply chain management as the new name for purchasing or operations (Monczka, Trent and Handfield 1998), or the combination of purchasing, operations and logistics (Wisner, Keong Leong and Keah-Choon 2004). A supply chain is a network of facilities and activities involved in delivering a product from raw materials through …show more content…

To support supply chain strategy businesses clearly we need to invest in appropriate infrastructure to support their activities (Morton, 1998 Premkumar, 2000). Therefore, this investment includes systems support, training, and development of personnel. Also the investment is usually necessary in terms of information technology to run supply chain systems (Cottrill, 1997, Richardson, 1997, Hewitt, 1999). Supply chain strategy must specify how a firm will achieve its competitive advantages through its supply chain capabilities such as cost efficiency, response speed, and flexibility. It also specifies how manufacturing, purchasing, marketing, and logistics functions work together to support the desired competitive strategy (Handfield & Nichols, 2002). In this case, supply chain strategy must explains and empirically shows how and why specific information system strategies can be gainfully aligned with different types of supply chains and the results call for attention to the need for fit between the firm and its suppliers in terms of information system affectation and capabilities. Sufian, Monideepa (2012). Yinan, Xiande, and Chwen, (2011) provide managerial implications for executives to select the proper supply chain and competitive strategies to improve performance under different competitive environments. Business competition has been shifting from the traditional firm basis to a supply chain wide basis (Van Hoek et al., 2001; Webster, 2002). This described as a shift from vertically aligning operations to horizontally aligning operations (Frohlich and Westbrook, 2001). Research in the area of operations strategy is shifting its emphasis from

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