Supply Chain Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Supply Chain Design - Essay Example All of these themes can be of paramount importance to augmenting supply chain design for most businesses in today’s competitive environment. Internet and IT Technology has expanded world over enormously and it goes without doubt that its use is must for designing an effective supply chain in numerous products and services. For example, Solectron uses ‘Agile software’ to access numerous suppliers online for pricing and availability of supplies. This resulted into reduction of cycle time while introducing new product to its customers (Lee). Companies such as Dell, Adaptec, Cisco, Zara (Global Stretch), and numerous others have used the internet to make their supply chain management most effective. Cisco has created an e-Hub that links multiple suppliers via the internet to meet needs of the market and make supply chain more efficient (Lee). The companies expand their sourcing opportunities and reduce their inventory holding between supply chain partners. In fact, the internet has replaced the traditional model of supply chain management with more efficient and effective supply chain design making the use of IT technologies (Lee). Southwest Airlines has been able to manage its profitability during difficult times of post 2008 recession through i2 technologies deployed for supply chain management. The company has been able to increase its service levels to 95 percent and excess inventory of $30 million has been identified using i2 tools (SupplyChainBrain). Currently, companies are facing an increasingly difficult situation to provide customized products and services without any lapse of time and in this process, they have to see that there is no significant cost increase in their offerings. This is the theme on which companies have to design their supply chain to gain the competitive advantage. It is indeed a challenging task for companies! In usual sense, customization will