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Essay / Supply Chain Management Essay - 638
Supply chain management is the management of the flow of goods. It involves the movement and storage of raw materials, inventory and finished goods from the point of origin to the point of consumption. It has been defined as “the design, planning, execution, control and monitoring of supply chain activities with the aim of creating net value, building competitive infrastructure, leveraging global logistics, to synchronize supply with demand and to measure performance on a global scale. Supply chain management has strategic implications for any business. Identifying the required performance measures across most criteria is essential and should be an integral part of any business strategy. Thus, the food supply chain and its management are essential to agriculture, the food industry and the market. 2.2 Business Process of a Food Supply Chain As mentioned earlier, the food supply chain includes the production, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food. A wide diversity of products and companies operate in different markets and sell a variety of food products. Input suppliers/service providers offer seeds of various crops (raw materials) to primary food producers (farmers) so that they can produce crops. Then, transporters ship the crops to packing/storage facilities, and food processors (manufacturing) process the crops into different types of food products and sell them to wholesalers/retailers (distribution). Finally, consumers purchase food products from wholesalers/retailers.2.3 Global Food Supply Chains Although the growing trend among consumers and grocers is to "buy local", the food supply chain is gradually becoming more and more more important. ......like Kraft Foods, Thailand's frozen food industry and Australia's beef supply chain etc. In the book Quantifying the Agri-Food Supply Chain, he describes “this model (Balanced Scorecard) uses performance measures from financial sources”. (e.g., manufacturing cost and warehousing cost), customer (e.g., on-time delivery and order fulfillment rate), business process (e.g., adherence to manufacturing plan), innovation and technology (e.g. new product development). cycle time). By combining these different perspectives, the Balanced Scorecard helps a manager understand the relationships and tradeoffs between alternative performance measures and leads to better decision-making. The Balanced Scorecard is more tactical and strategic than other models used in the food supply chain, primarily because it is an operations-oriented method..