ماهى اداره سلاسل الامداد (Supply Chain Management)

What is supply chain management?[b][/b]
Supply chain management (SCM) is the combination of art and science that goes into improving the way your company finds the raw components it needs to make a product or service and deliver it to customers. The following are five basic components of SCM.
1. Plan—This is the strategic portion of SCM. Companies need a strategy for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for their product or service. A big piece of SCM planning is developing a set of metrics to monitor the supply chain so that it is efficient, costs less and delivers high quality and value to customers.
2. Source—Next, companies must choose suppliers to deliver the goods and services they need to create their product. Therefore, supply chain managers must develop a set of pricing, delivery and payment processes with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving the relationships. And then, SCM managers can put together processes for managing their goods and services inventory, including receiving and verifying shipments, transferring them to the manufacturing facilities and authorizing supplier payments.
3. Make—This is the manufacturing step. Supply chain managers schedule the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging and preparation for delivery. This is the most metric-intensive portion of the supply chain—one where companies are able to measure quality levels, production output and worker productivity.
4. Deliver—This is the part that many SCM insiders refer to as logistics, where companies coordinate the receipt of orders from customers, develop a network of warehouses, pick carriers to get products to customers and set up an invoicing system to receive payments.
5. Return—This can be a problematic part of the supply chain for many companies. Supply chain planners have to create a responsive and flexible network for receiving defective and excess products back from their customers and supporting customers who have problems with delivered products..
What does supply chain management software do?
Supply chain management software is possibly the most fractured group of software applications on the planet. Each of the five major supply chain steps previously outlined is comprised of dozens of specific tasks, many of which have their own specific software. Some vendors have assembled many of these different chunks of software together under a single roof, but no one has a complete package that is right for every company. For example, most companies need to track demand, supply, manufacturing status, logistics (i.e. where things are in the supply chain), and distribution. They also need to share data with supply chain partners at an ever increasing rate. While products from large ERP vendors like SAP's Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) can perform many or all of these tasks, because each industry's supply chain has a unique set of challenges, many companies decide to go with targeted best of breed products instead, even if some integration is an inevitable consequence.
It's worth mentioning that the old adage about systems only being as good as the information that they contain applies doubly to SCM. If the information entered into a demand forecasting application is not accurate, then you will get an inaccurate forecast. Similarly, if employees bypass the supply chain systems and try to manage things manually (using the fax machine or spreadsheets), then even the most expensive systems will provide an incomplete picture of what is happening in a company's supply chain
What is the relationship between ERP, CRM and SCM?
Many SCM applications are reliant upon the kind of information that is stored inside enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and, in some cases, to some customer relationship management (CRM) packages. Theoretically a company could assemble the information it needs to feed the SCM applications from legacy systems (for most companies this means Excel spreadsheets spread out all over the place), but it can be nightmarish to try to get that information flowing on a fast, reliable basis from all the areas of the company. ERP is the battering ram that integrates all that information in a single application, and SCM applications benefit from having a single major source to go to for up-to-date information. Most CIOs who have tried to install SCM applications say they are glad they did ERP first. They call the ERP projects "putting your information house in order." Of course, ERP is expensive and difficult, so you may want to explore ways to feed your SCM applications the information they need without doing ERP first. These days, most ERP vendors have SCM modules, so doing an ERP project may be a way to kill two birds with one stone. In addition, the rise and importance of CRM systems inside companies today puts even more pressure on a company to integrate all of its enterprisewide software packages. Companies will need to decide if these products meet their needs or if they need a more specialized system.
Applications that simply automate the logistics aspects of SCM are less dependent upon gathering information from around the company, so they tend to be independent of the ERP decision. But chances are, companies will need to have these applications communicate with ERP in some fashion. It's important to pay attention to the software's ability to integrate with the Internet and with ERP applications because the Internet will drive demand for integrated information. For example, if a company wants to build a private website for communicating with their customers and suppliers, the company will want to pull information from ERP and supply chain applications together to present updated information about orders, payments, manufacturing status and delivery.

What is the goal of installing supply chain management software?
Before the Internet came along, the aspirations of supply chain software devotees were limited to improving their ability to predict demand from customers and make their own supply chains run more smoothly. But the cheap, ubiquitous nature of the Internet, along with its simple, universally accepted communication standards, have thrown things wide open. Now, companies can connect their supply chain with the supply chains of their suppliers and customers together in a single vast network that optimizes costs and opportunities for everyone involved. This was the reason for the B2B explosion; the idea that everyone a company does business with could be connected together into one big happy, cooperative family.
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Of course, reality isn't quite that happy and cooperative. But today most companies share at least some data with their supply chain partners. The goal of these projects is greater supply chain visibility. The supply chain in most industries is like a big card game: the players don't want to show their cards because they don't trust anyone else with the information, but if they showed their hands they could all benefit. Suppliers wouldn't have to guess how many raw materials to order, and manufacturers wouldn't have to order more than they need from suppliers to make sure they have enough on hand if demand for their products unexpectedly increases. And retailers would have fewer empty shelves if they shared the information they had about sales of a manufacturer's product in all their stores with the manufacturer. The Internet makes showing your hand to others possible, but centuries of distrust and lack of coordination within industries make it difficult.
During the last few years most companies have gotten over the trust issue. In many cases "gotten over" is a euphemism for "have been bullied into sharing supply chain information from a dominant industry player." Want to sell your goods in Wal-Mart? Better be prepared to share data and adhere to Wal-Mart's data-exchange standards. (For more on this topic, see "How Wal-Mart Lost Its Technology Edge.")
The payoff of timely and accurate supply chain information is the ability to make or ship only as much of a product as there is a market for. This is the practice known as just-in-time manufacturing, and it allows companies to reduce the amount of inventory that they keep. This can cut costs substantially, since you no longer need to pay to produce and store excess goods. But many companies and their supply chain partners have a long way to go before that level of supply chain flexibility can be achieved.
Implementing a Warehouse Management System (WMS
Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) have been available since the earliest computer systems and were allowed simple storage location functionality. Today WMS systems can be standalone or part of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and can include complex technology such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and voice recognition. However the basic principle of the warehouse system has remained the same, which is to provide information to allow efficient control of the movement of materials within the warehouse.
When selecting a WMS there are many vendors to choose from. If you currently operate an ERP system then the WMS functionality may be part of that suite, or you can use a bolt-on WMS package. For companies that use best of breed solutions, the choice of WMS will reflect the requirements of your warehouse operations.
The implementation of a WMS is often complex. Project planning is critical to the success of any WMS implementation. The project requires warehouse resources to collect data on the physical warehouse, materials, inventory as well as defining the strategies required to operate the warehouse. There is the added challenge of implementing the system whilst still operating the warehouse. A major factor of all projects is still ship product whilst the WMS is being implemented.
The complexity of a WMS implementation varies with every business. The physical dimensions and characteristics of each item in the warehouse are required to be collected and entered into the new system. Capacity calculations require the physical size and weight of the item as well as the dimensions of all the storage bins or racks in the warehouse. The storage options for each item are required, for example if the item can be stored separately, in box, pallet or if it can be stacked. Each item must be reviewed to see if it is physical limitations on its storage, such as requiring refrigeration. Hazardous material information needs to be collected so that the item is not stored in certain areas. This information is only part of the requirements of the WMS implementation. The system requires decisions or configuration to be made on how items are to be placed or removed from the system, in what order, for what types of materials and what methods of placement and removal should be used. The implementation requires significant input from the resources that operate the warehouse on a day to day basis and this can be a strain on warehouse operations. A successful project will recognize this fact and ensure that the key personnel required for the implementation are given adequate back up so that warehouse operations do not suffer.
After the successful launch of the WMS system, many businesses will find that the resources required to operate the system is greater than prior to the implementation. This is primarily due to the data intensive nature of the software and the fact that warehouses are in a state of flux; racks are moved, placement and removal strategies changed, new items added, new processes developed. Warehouse accuracy is paramount for the software to operate and to do this data will need to be entered accurately and in a timely fashion. Although most WMS implementations will reduce labor costs in the placement and removal of materials, there is often an added warehouse management function required just to operate the software.
Despite the complexity, WMS implementations do offer businesses significant benefits. Not only will placement and removal cycle times be reduced, but inventory accuracy should be improved as well as increased storage capacity, more organized storage of materials and greater flexibility of warehouse operations.


Warehouse Best Practices
Companies are constantly trying to find ways to improve performance and warehouse operations is area where supply chain managers can focus to gain maximum efficiency for minimum cost. To get the most out of the operation, a number of best practices can be adopted to improve productivity and overall customer satisfaction. Although best practices vary from industry to industry and by the products shipped there are a number of best practices that can be applied to most companies.
When considering the level of effort involved in warehouse operations, the greatest expenditure of effort is in the picking process. To gain efficiencies in picking the labor time to pick orders needs to be reduced and this can achieved in a number of ways. Companies with the most efficient warehouses have the most frequently picked items closest to the shipping areas to minimize picking time. These companies achieve their competitive advantage by constantly reviewing their sales data to ensure that the items are stored close to the shipping area are still the most frequently picked.
Warehouse layout is also important in achieve greater efficiencies. Minimizing travel time between picking locations can greatly improve productivity. However, to achieve this increase in efficiency, companies must develop processes to regularly monitor picking travel times and storage locations.
Warehouse operations that still use hard copy pick tickets find that it is not very efficient and prone to human errors. To combat this and to maximize efficiency, world class warehouse operations had adopted technology that is some of today’s most advanced systems. In addition to hand-held RF readers and printers, companies are introducing pick-to-light and voice recognition technology.
In a pick-to-light system, an operator will scan a bar-coded label attached to a box. A digital display located in front of the pick bin will inform the operator of the item and quantity that they need to pick. Companies are typically using pick-to-light systems for their top 5 to 20% selling products. By introducing this system companies can gain significant efficiencies as it is totally paperless and eliminates the errors caused by pick tickets.
Voice picking systems inform the operator of pick instructions through a headset. The pick instructions are sent via RF from the company’s ERP or order management software. The system allows operators to perform pick operations without looking at a computer screen or deal with paper pick tickets. Many world class warehouse operations have adopted voice picking to complement the pick-to-light systems in place for their fast moving products.
Although many companies will not be able to afford new technologies for picking, we’ve seen here that there are a number of best practices that can be adopted to improve efficiency and reduce cost.