Advanced Techniques in Supply Chain Management

Advanced Techniques in Supply Chain Management
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1.
Some of the most critical disciplines under supply chain management are to wit; purchasing, procurement, and strategic sourcing. These three are related in that in a way or the other, they each complement each other. This is apparent from the definition, which implies that; procurement refers to the various mechanisms involved in a business obtaining goods and services and purchasing refers to the obtaining of such commodities for continued attainment of a business’ goals. On the other hand, strategic sourcing involves various aspects of procurement and purchasing, their study and possible perfection to meet specific needs (Lummus et al., 2001). Ideally, strategic sourcing is considered a tactical discipline and herein lies the difference between these three phenomena. An in-depth analysis indicates that the difference between procurement and purchasing is a rather superficial one, with procurement referring to the process of obtaining goods and services and purchasing referring to one of the steps involved in the said process. However, strategic sourcing is the process of developing the best economic practices in supply; usually with great attention to the cost of production (Lummus et al., 2001).
2.
Production operations in the supply chain refer to the processes involved in the actual manufacturing of the raw materials into finished products. Ideally, the role of the production operations is the proper management of critical aspects of manufacturing such as staffing, production, design workflow, and planning (Bravo et al.

2014). To this end, productions operations must operate in tandem with other departments of an organization such as human resources management. Also, production operations are concerned with matters to do with strategic sourcing and as such, the emphasis is placed on efficiency at production. This has manifested itself in the phenomenon of lean production. This refers to a manufacturing system that minimizes on waste without compromising on quality (Bravo et al. 2014). Here manufacturers focus their effort and resources at those elements of production that add maximum value while awarding focus proportionately to the rest of the factors of production. A notable example, which is sometimes credited as the cradle of lean production was at Toyota back when it was in the business of manufacturing textiles. The company introduced looms that automatically stopped when a thread broke. In this way, the company was able to produce good quality products and minimize on wastage of time and other resources due to mishaps in production such as a broken thread (Bravo et al. 2014).

References
Bravo, C., Rodriguez, J., Saputelli, L., & Rivas Echevarria, F. (2014, April). Applying Analytics to Production Workflows: Transforming Integrated Operations into Intelligent Operations. In SPE Intelligent Energy Conference & Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Lummus, R. R., Krumwiede, D. W., & Vokurka, R. J. (2001). The relationship of logistics to supply chain management: developing a common industry definition. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 101(8), 426-432.