Supply chain

A supply chain moves a product or service from supplier to customer. It is the people, activities, information, and resources which move the product.

Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials, and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end user or customer. The term is most used in business and finance. In military use, the usual terms are production and logistics. Thus, the supply chain is a series of activities in the transit of goods.

More than 9000 people still ask this question on Google search, despite Supply Chain Management (SCM) was introduced in early 1980s (Oliver and Webber, 1982) but it’s has been growing in importance since the early 1990s.

History and Evolution of Supply Chain and Logistics explains chronological evolution of the concepts of logistics and the supply chain, dividing them into seven distinct phases:

1. The Transportation Era (1950s)
2. The Physical Distribution (1960s)
3. Physical Supply, Deregulation and Logistics (1970s)
4. Transportation, Deregulation, Physical Distribution and Business Logistics (1980s)
5. Business Logistics (1990s)
6. Logistics and Supply Chain Management (2000s)
7. Supply Chain Digitalization (2010’s)

Supply Chain Media

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  Supply and demand stacked in a conceptual chain

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  A chain is actually a complex and dynamic supply and demand network.

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  A diagram of a supply chain. The black arrow represents the flow of materials and information, and the gray arrow represents the flow of information and backhauls. The elements are (a) the initial supplier (vendor or plant), (b) a supplier, (c) a manufacturer (production), (d) a customer, and (e) the final customer.

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  A German paper factory receives its daily supply of 75 tons of recyclable paper as its raw material.

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  Many electronics manufacturers of Guangdong and beyond rely on the supply of parts from numerous component shops in Shenzhen.