UNIT 6 STRATEGIC SUPPLY CHAIN

MANAGEMENT

Objectives
After reading this unit you would be able to:
• discuss the imperatives for supply chain, strategy development;
• be acquainted with the issues in supply chain domain and strategic decisions
in the supply chain;
• discuss supplier alliances;
• illustrate supplier quality management and related problems; and
• explain supply chain re-engineering.

Structure
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Supply Chain: Growth
6.2.1 Trends in SCM
6.2.2 Strategic Decisions
6.2.3 Strategic Supply Management Activities
6.3 Supply Alliances
6.3.1 Developing and Managing the Relationship
6.4 Supplier Quality Management
6.4.1 Problems of Quality
6.4.2 How to Find the Qualified Supplier?
6.4.3 Quantity Survey of Suppliers
6.5 Supply Chain Re-engineering
6.6 Summary
6.7 Self Assessment Questions
6.8 References and Suggested Further Readings

6.1 INTRODUCTION

After having seen the various models for SCM integration, integration of supply
and demand chain, let us now take a closer look at the strategic supply chain
management.

The successes in the manufacturers of today revolve around certain basic

services related to both product management and consumer satisfaction. The
imperatives are:
• Shorter product life cycle.
• Quality control.
• Timely delivery.
• Low cost delivery options.
• Reduction in costs, both production and to the end user.
• Waste management.
The imperatives above create a continuous pressure on the companies for
frequent changes, both in terms of policies and strategies, and in a way force the
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companies to stay abreast of the latest. According to the world competitiveness

report competitiveness is equal to multiplication of competitive assets and
competitive process (Deshmukh & Mohanty).

Where, competitive assets include technology, infrastructure, people and

government institutions, and competitive process include quality, speed,
customization and services.1 Logistics has always been the backbone to
infrastructure for the manufacturers. Within the purview of SCM logistics has
been the art and science of procuring, producing and delivering products and
services at the right time, in right quantity and at the appropriate place. As we
have seen earlier, SCM involves planning, implementation, controlling, storage, and
transportation and end delivery from the point of origin to the point of
consumption as part of consumer/customer requirements. It is a network of
facilities that perform the tasks of procuring the raw materials, transport them,
transformation of materials to finished products and further distribution of goods
to the end user, the customers. During initial evolution it was felt that logistics
that involved transporting and warehousing couldn’t effectively influence the
strategic goals and hence, extensive investment needn’t be done. Activities
relating to customer services, warehousing, order processing, inventories and sales
were also ignored. Production, marketing and finance operated independently, and
inventories and sales ignored. It was in the seventies that the management
explored the scope of reducing the distribution costs. The concept of total cost
management was evolved in order to optimize the total costs rather than costs of
activities taken in isolation. A centralized logistics function was given the
responsibility of controlling costs with emphasis on maximization of service level.
Slowly but steadily the aspects of logistics got integrated with the other functional
activities of the supply chain, and the functional chain emanating from supplier to
the delivery options to the end user, were formulated and incorporated with the
operational and strategic plans. In the final stage logistics were accorded due
importance in the strategic planning. The imperatives for supply chain strategy
are:
• Global sourcing
• Global networking and marketing
• Revolution in global business process
• Customer centric management activities
• Integrated planning system
• Integration of functional activities in the supply chain towards a common
goal for competitive advantage

6.2 SUPPLY CHAIN: GROWTH

According to Hicks, the imperatives for growth of supply chain are:

• Enhanced customer expectation: Competition worldwide has led to
maximum emphasis on customer service over the years. The value of the
product can only be determined when the product reaches the customer in
time and at the required place. The value of customer service has acquired
such dimension that, if the product doesn’t reach in time, the sale will be
lost to a competitor who offers in time, an ideal substitute. This can further
be classified under:
• Pre-transaction Elements: Relating to corporate policies and program.

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2Deshmukh & Mohanty in Essentials of Supply Chain Management, p 13

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Transaction Elements: These are those variables involved directly in
physical distribution, i.e. product and delivery reliability.
• Post-transaction Elements: These are those aspects dealing with after
sales service, warranty, repair, customer complaints and replacements.
• Pressure for Quick Response: Customers today expect a better and
quicker response owing to the value added services being provided by the
manufacturers. This is mainly due to shortened product life cycles,
consumer’s drive and volatile markets, making reliance on forecasts difficult
and dangerous. The key to quick response is pipeline management, i.e. a
process where manufacturing and procurement procedures are linked to
requirements of the market. It seeks to meet the competitive challenges of
increasing the speed of response to the market needs.
• Impact of Globalization: Present global environment is forcing the
organizations to incorporate the world in their strategies and analysis. Certain
key factors like, economic trends, competitiveness, technological advances,
the firms today cannot ignore them. Companies therefore must identify and
analyse factors that differ across nations and determine the impact on the
operations functions. Transportation and distribution therefore assumes
greater importance in such scenario, and the companies have to rightfully
integrate and manage the facilities and markets available in this backdrop.
Logistics, therefore, assumes greater strategic significance.
• Organizational Integration: Organizations today need to be broad-based
integrators, inclined towards the achievements of market place successes,
based on managing systems and people that deliver the service. Generalists,
therefore, assume greater importance to specialists to integrate materials and
operation management with delivery. Today, IT is slowly proving to be a
great integrator for various functions, spanning from supplier to the
customers.

6.2.1 Trends in SCM

The major trends in SCM are:
• Co-maker Ship: It is defined as the development of a long-term
relationship with limited number of suppliers on the basis of mutual
confidence.2 The benefits are:
• Shorter delivery lead times
• Reliable delivery
• Lesser schedule disruption
• Lower stock levels
• Lesser quality problems
• Stable prices
• Higher priority to orders
The basic philosophy of this alliance is that the supplier is considered to be the
extension of customer relationship, with emphasis on continuity and a seamless
end-to-end pipeline. With growth in outsourcing the trend towards co-maker ship
also increases manifold. This principle can be extended both ways in the supply
chain-upstream to customers and downstream to distributor, retailer and users.
• Third Party Logistics: Outsourcing operations like storage, transportation
and delivery, improve service levels, reduce costs and increase flexibility. It
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Essentials of SCM by Deshmukh & Mohanty pp. 16-18 3

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also helps in reducing costs on trucks, warehouses and certain infrastructure

requirements, and allows firms to acquire new technologies and enter newer
markets. Yet, certain aspect does merit attention. These outside service
providers may not at times perform up to the requirements of the
manufacturer and would result in loss of image of the firm. Therefore
though third party logistics could be cost effective, at times the firm should
use these depending upon the organization’s needs, capabilities of the service
provider and the resulting pay off.
• Principle of Postponement: The time when the product is ready for sale
is known to the organisation, and consequent delay in labeling, packaging and
pricing till the last moment is called principle of postponement. The sole
objective is to minimize the risk of carrying finished product to the various
points of the supply chain by delaying the product differentiation to the latest
possible moment before customer purchase. The cost savings on
transportation and storage are attained by keeping products at the highest
level and by moving goods through the supply chain in large, generic
quantities (Deshmukh & Mohanty 2004). Examples of postponement are:
• Delayed labeling
• Shipping in bulk
• Transferring to small containers at warehouses
• Delay final assembly
• Stocking fuel, oil & lubricants (FOL) in unblended state
However, it has to be noted that postponement shouldn’t compromise the desired
service level.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) & DRP: ERP systems are
basically information integrators and they help in binding various business
processes in an enterprise. It also helps in streamlining and re-engineering of
various processes, focusing on value activities and eliminating non-value
added activities. Due to influx of IT, ERP has been able to provide a wide
information base with an aim to optimize resources. This has further helped
in in-bound logistics, transportation, material management and accounting at
large. DRP on the other hand helps in estimating inventory requirements at
stocking areas and ensures supply sources are able to meet the demand. It
incorporates policies on safety stocks, information and relation between
demand forecasts, inventory levels, manufacturing and distribution schedules.
DRP helps in both short term and future production and distribution
resources, in order to match both supply and demand. Because of minimal
inventory that is held, DRP can be called the key to logistics and JIT
productions.

6.2.2 Strategic Decisions

Strategies are a set of important decisions derived from a decision making

process of the top management in the organization. In order to ensure success,
the strategic changes that are being incorporated in the supply chain, has to
conform to well defined strategies formulated by the company from time to time.
The top management in the company forms the strategic decisions and successful
execution of these decisions should provide a cutting edge to the organization.
Areas that require strategic decisions are warehousing, transportation, IT, and
make versus buy. We have already seen warehousing and transportation in detail
in unit-4 and 5, and hence will dwell on IT and makers versus buy.
• IT Solutions and Integration: IT solutions will play a significant role in
4 information building all through the supply chain. However, companies should

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address several queries centered on proper alignment of information
technology tools and the expected increase in productivity and services.
Identifying the very scope of the business problem that is to be addressed is
the most important in this complete exercise. This effort will help in
identifying the best course available to the manufacturer and the area that it
is to be applied, the core business issues. At the same time, it is also
important to assess the effect of IT on the organization as a whole and its
capabilities. More often than not, IT affects the business in 3 ways:3
• The integrated process requires managers for restructuring the cultures
and capabilities on values providing continuous improvement and
teamwork.
• It enables the organization not only to rethink but also leverage new
information, like graphics, computer integration and workstation
technology.
• Application of new information requires redefinition of goals and skills of
the enterprise’s people resources.
The response to the issue of managing the supply chain included having a fully
integrated business, and some of the vehicle manufacturing companies were
structured in a way where the input were raw materials and output the finished
product. However, the driving forces for global manufacturers have ranged from
becoming a tiered global supply system in the West to the Japanese Kereitsu
based company supply system, although there are quite a few near fully
integrated companies in the developing nations till date.

The following are the reasons propounded by Christopher (1992) for not following
the integrated supply chain:
• Few managers retain a grasp of a process from one end of the pipeline to
the other. As a result, the way things get done can reflect convenience for
doers, a desire to protect functional boundaries and a lack of understanding
the related consequences, both up and down streams of individual
processes.
• Initiatives of changes are functional in nature and seldom reflect the cost
of the system.
• Their custodians as a means of providing breathing space and as ways of
providing some hidden flexibility respond to protect lead times. The
individual functional lead times contain slack and where these become
embodied in a processing system, they are institutionalized.
Actually, companies that have benefited from integration are pacing ahead with
confidence, and IT as a whole have further aided in integration vigorously.
• Make versus Buy: The main organization focus today is on outsourcing of
non-critical components. These decisions are arrived at after considering the
factors like, capacity, leverage an organization gets and the quality and
confidence in working with the vendor. Make buy decision is a strategic
decision and the area that has to addressed in this is development of the
total cost model (Deshmukh & Mohanty). It has been seen that having a
supplier that can work in a simultaneous engineering way with the company
is the main aspect in order to avoid costs associated with unnecessary
design complexity. This may also mean having a supplier who can provide
the same support through IT rather than having an engineer in site, and
achieve the same result. The next consideration is the aspect of labour

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Deshmukh & Mohanty in Essentials of supply chain management, pp. 20 5

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elements. Here, once again the need for simultaneous engineering is required
mainly in those off-shore areas with low labour rates, over and above issues
like labour rate inflation and challenges of overseas sourcing. All these have
to be considered in a structured manner and not in isolation.
6.2.3 Strategic Supply Management Activities

As per Burt and Dobler, supply management focus on ten strategic activities:
• Environment Monitoring: Monitoring the supply environments to identify
threats and opportunities, is an important task of supply managements, to
include material shortages affecting both price and availability of purchased
materials and services. They can further be classified as:
• Changes in legislation: affecting the workplace. This can affect both
price and availability.
• Wars and conflicts that can affect availability of materials resulting in
price increase.
• Consolidation among suppliers: to the extent of monopoly. A firm should
change its strategy based on such changes.
• Integrated Supply Strategy: Supply management should develop and
manage the firm’s supply strategy based on wholesome integration strategy
and not in isolated strategies.
• Commodity Strategy: Must develop and update sound commodity supply
strategy. The following activities have to be performed to ensure
effectiveness of the strategies:
• Strategy Updating: Commodity teams must identify materials, items of
equipment and services that are strategic in nature or should formulate
a strategic plan for obtaining them.
• Technology Access Control: All supply management organization’s
develop and update technology road maps, which lists critical current
and future technologies to be pursued. Action should be at hand to
protect these technologies that yield a competitive edge and ensure are
not transferred to competitors.
• Supply Management Organization: The organization of the supply
management system must enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of
the system in attaining the primary objective.
• Risk Management: Actions should be taken to ensure minimum
disruption of supplies and price increase.
• Data Management: Supply management, accounting and information
technology must cooperate in the collection and application of supply data to
facilitate the strategic supply planning.
• Corporate Strategic Plan: Supply management should join the marketing
and operations as the key players in development of each of the firm’s
corporate strategic plan. Supply management provides input to the strategic
planning process on threats and opportunities in the supply world. It also
provides inputs on constraints that may affect strategic initiatives. Its
knowledge of the firm’s supply world may be a vital source of input for
strategic planning.
• Strategic Sourcing: The firm should manage and develop its supply base in
line with firm’s strategic objectives. Several actions that should be taken are:
• Periodic review of the active suppliers.
• Identification of the appropriate relationship (transactional, collaborative
6 or alliance) for each commodity class.

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Optimization of supply base with coordination and combination
with several forces to increase the importance of the firm’s supply
base.
• Strategic Supply Alliances: Developing and managing the supply alliances
frequently are two of the most crucial and most strategic activities
undertaken by any firm. Institutional trust is a key prerequisite to supply
alliances. Rapid growth of American society of Alliance Professionals is a
testimony to the industry’s recognition of importance of these activities.

Fig 6.1 Strategic Supply Management

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Supply Chain/Networks: These help in developing and managing of supply

alliances, but is more complex. IT & relationship skills are essential
prerequisite for personnel assigned to the task. Charles Fine in his book
Clock speed writes, ‘ the farther you look upstream in your technology
supply chain, the more volatility you see. Customers are foolish if they don’t
spend any time or resources thinking of the health, survival, and possible
independence of their core technology suppliers’.4
• Social Responsibilities: Supply management must develop and implement
programs that will protect the environment, facilitating the inclusion of
woman-owned, minority based and small business in our economy to
promote values in the workplace.
• Understand Key Supply Industry: Its impact is directly proportional to the
knowledge of related industries in which it buys. They study and understand
the industries that provide the key materials, equipment, and services, cost
structures, technologies, competitive nature and culture.
The above provides the understanding of supply managements responsibilities both
strategic and tactical, which if executed effectively and efficiently will be a key
to the firm’s success and survival, fig 6.1.

Activity 1

Understand the difference in strategies in supply managements and how it builds

up a company to be successful in the international arena?
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6.3 SUPPLY ALLIANCES

As seen above supplier alliances plays a key role in strategic supply chain
management activities across the board. Therefore in order to develop and
manage these relationship and alliances a firm has to continuously endeavor to
identify methods to facilitate these relations. Supplier is as important as the
customer and that has to be realised in the true sense.

Riggs & Robbins spelt out these relations in their book ‘The Executive Guide to
Supply Management Strategies’, they are:
• Annual Supplier Meetings: Annual supplier meeting is a common
phenomenon in maintaining direct relationship with the suppliers by the buyer
firm. It is used both as a teaching and learning platform as well as the
opportunity to distinguish one’s organisation as a supply management leader.
It dwells on the buyer’s management performance, learning and future goals.
The main objective being learning of key strategies to support the buyer’s
business. It requires extensive planning and is expensive, but it lays the
foundation of a buyer supplier relationship in the long run.
• Supplier Discussions: It’s an informal forum for gaining and sharing
learning, between the representatives, like the chief executive, chief
operating officer, and representatives from marketing, supply management

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8 Fine, Clockspeed, p. 95.

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and research divisions. It reviews the buyer’s progress and goals in the
backdrop of shift in strategies and policies. It’s a forum that builds trust and
respect, towards a successful supplier relationship.
• Workshops and Seminars: These are aimed at creating opportunities for
supply-stream innovations, which will benefit all the participants. It composes
of members of supplier participants who provide material and services that
are critical to the products made available at the marketplace. Such
discussions open the door for newer set of goals and collaborations. It
provides the base for continual improvement, concepts and innovations
required to guide and organize discussion and work sessions.
• Collaborations/Partnership: This is supposed to be the most successful
supplier buyer relationship in recent times. These are based on mutual
interdependence and respect. These alliances begin with careful selection of
source during the product design process. This is the time when the buyer
requires a dependable supplier who can provide the required process, design
and technological support for a successful product. The supplier at the same
time requires a responsible customer for its product and services. They both
require each other and have to work hand in glove. Unexpected criticalities
that may arise can be sorted out with a ‘we shall overcome’ attitude. The
most important in these relationships is the integration of the buyer and
supplier as long as the relationship is beneficial to each other.

6.3.1 Developing and Managing the Relationship

Supply managers at all levels should ensure and tailor appropriate actions during
the planning and management of such alliances mentioned above. Like:
• Instituting a Cross-Functional Team: A team so designated should be in
place to handle such alliances, which is responsible for development,
integration, and develop and manage appropriate measures for the alliance to
be successful.
• Training: Teams from both sides as designated should undergo appropriate
training in being constructive team players, and also in cross-functional team
skills.
• Communication System: The teams should develop and integrate an
effective communication system responsive to the needs and requirements of
both the firms.
• Trust Building: Measures to improve trust between the two organizations
have to be developed and implemented too.
• Visits: Periodic visits by the respective team members to each others site
has to be resorted to for confidence building and co-location of key technical
persons.
• Specialized Training: Plans have to be evolved and developed for
specialized training involving variance of products, designing, value analyses,
engineering, cost analysis and cost management.
• Objectives: Certain objectives have to be established in areas, including
quality, cost and time aspects.
• Monitoring: Results have to be continuously monitored and reported to the
management level.
• Supportive: Inter-firm team members should realize the importance of such
alliances and support the alliance goal in letter and spirit. It’s in the interest
of both the firms to support each other’s operations and their respective
goals, ethics over expediency. 9

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Management of supply contract is a challenging responsibility and a critical too.

Companies have to continuously generate and develop newer ideas and
innovations to maintain these relations and work in unison to a common goal
without jeopardizing each other’s interest in the overall gambit of supplier buyer
alliances and relationship.

6.4 SUPPLIER QUALITY MANAGEMENT

After having seen the supplier-buyer relationship, we will now see the quality
control aspects of supplier units. Quality management dates back to the 80’s,
wherein the Japanese companies developed a zero-defect program for their
products, primarily based on quality of the raw materials they procured. This was
resorted to by traditional methods of sampling of the incoming raw materials,
which implicitly inferred that there will be some non-conforming parts, that will be
used in the manufacturing operations resulting in lower material productivity and
higher manufacturing costs. This was never a full proof system and the lacunas
were too many, and resulted in longer lead-time to correct the specific problems
or adjustments to the operating systems. This would generally lead to longer
customer delivery time and cascading decrease in profits.

The main objective of this unit is to discuss the problems of quality and how to
generally overcome these issues. In every organization there is a wide diversity
of functions and structures for quality planning and control, and hence the first
step to quality assurance is a structural basis for the procurement system that
should be organic in character and reflect the concern for quality control in
developing the relationship of the interdependent organization throughout the
supply chain. With this as a preamble let us see the problems of vendor /
supplier quality.

6.4.1 Problems of Quality

The suppliers till late had been providing natural/semi-processed materials to the
manufacturers for their finished products. Under such circumstances, quality
control was never a problem since it was dependent on the quality of raw
materials. “The buyer and suppliers were almost quasi-independent and had little
interaction between them” (Deshmukh & Mohanty, 2004). Today things have
changed considerably and most of the companies are engaged in different type of
purchases and procurements, particularly very complex and highly engineered sub-
systems with critical interfacing with other components. Therefore, some key
features have to be evolved for a better buyer-supplier relationship and its effect
on the quality assurances on the whole (we have seen this in the last unit of
buyer-supplier relationship/alliances). However, for quality assurance, some
activities that are to be followed are:
• Mission: The company’s mission and policies on supplier quality relations
have to be spelt out clearly (as for ISO-9000).
• Identification: Identify and develop qualified and capable suppliers who can
assure of quality, and weeding out the lesser variants.
• Communication: Communicating essential and helpful information, designs,
and specifications and also engineering changes promptly.
• Development: Developing methods for detecting the deviations through
reproduction and trials.
• Assistance: Provide assistance to the supplier on quality related problems
and overcome them.
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Review: Periodic review of the performance of the supplier through
supplies rating and follow up actions against poor suppliers.
These activities are not sacrosanct and depend on the following:
• Nature of goods being purchased
• Volume of the purchase
• Total suppliers
• Repeat purchase
• Research, design and subcontract management.

6.4.2 How to Find the Qualified Supplier?

A very tedious process and action at hand by the buyer firm is to find a suitable
supplier who can generally meet the benchmark of the purchaser, i.e. ‘the best
from the best within the cost’, under ideal conditions of course. However the
following evaluation methods could be used to get the best from the best:
• Reputation: This is a variable factor and differs from company to company,
big and small. For a big company it is of significance and for a smaller
company it’s almost obscure. A detailed survey and market search will help
in identifying the best that can deliver the best within the cost per se. The
buyers’ generally maintain database on prior performance of these
companies.
• Database: Maintaining a database in financial function has been very
effective, however, it is in development stage for use in quality functions
(Desmukh & Mohanty, 2004).
• Surveys: The purchasing and procurement division of a company is carrying
out the selection of the appropriate supplier. Clarity of information is an
important factor in this selection process, and such information on the
supplier will provide the right weightage for the supplier selection.
• Trial & Error: Sometimes this procedure will also help in choosing the
correct supplier for the manufacturer. At times certain obscure suppliers
qualify to the requirements of the manufacturer and provide the goods as
required. The limiting factor is the right chance at the right time.
• Faith & Reliance: This is another aspect that will help in getting the right
supplier when the company requires the most. No supplier would like to
loose out/compromise on the aspects of faith and reliability that has been
bestowed on it by the buyer unit.
• Opportunity: This is another factor because of which many small suppliers
loose out on a buyer’s search radar. The buyer should carry out an in-depth
selection of the supplier and provide a fair opportunity to even the smallest
to prove its worth, sometimes, it does pay huge benefits in the long run.

6.4.3 Quality Survey of Suppliers

It’s an evaluation process, which enables the buyer to select the appropriate
supplier conforming to the buyer’s requirements. Does the supplier have the
ability to respond to the buyer’s requirements? Does he require assistance in any
form? This and many, can be answered by help of visits to the supplier’s site by
a team of specialists or through a balanced questionnaire. The following are the
survey evaluation on the supplier:5

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Assuring the Quality Procurement System in Essentials of SCM by Desmukh & Mohanty 11

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Policies/Practices on Quality: These are the basic guidelines based on

which the quality assurance of the supplier can be determined. They are the
real intentions that are to be implemented in a variety of degrees, the main
problem is to evaluate the policies and determine the degree to which they
are to be implemented.

• Facilities: These are related to tests and inspection that meet the quality
requirement of the purchased product. Samples are taken and checked with
the vendor and buyer’s gauge to compare the gauging systems. This kind of
checking reduces the risk to both the supplier and the buyer.

• Procedures and Actions: These are the procedures for handling quality
problems like gauge control deviations from existing specifications. The
aim of the survey is to determine whether the procedures are in vogue
or not.

• Appraisal: Appraisal of personnel from viewpoint of quality is very difficult,

but discovering the technical competence and attitude to quality can be
established. But, this could be just subjective at times, due to turnover of
key personnel. Yet, a general attitude of quality control can be found out
through auditing, discipline, and maintenance and housekeeping records.

For a new product line searching for a capable supplier is indeed a difficult task
and this can well spell the difference between success and failure of any new
product. Geographical location and close proximity is a reason to search for a
supplier closer home, without a rating of sorts, but selection for a long-term
supplier in high volumes is a tedious process and should start early. The
prospective suppliers can be located by any methods, but the pertinent questions
that should be addressed are:
• How well do the objectives of the quality program conform to the buyer’s
needs?
• How well the practices of the quality control program conform to the
objectives?
The objective of this evaluation is to arrive at a judgment of how well supplier’s
programme operates, neither to tabulate the efficiencies nor rationalize the
shortcomings. The areas for evaluation are:
• Quality
• Price
• Performance
• Production capabilities

A supplier survey is analogous to a profit and loss statement, that is, it speaks of
the status at any one point in time and will not guarantee of the status at any
other time. Therefore, the communication of the survey must continue for a long
time towards a good partnership.

Increased competition in the economic scene worldwide results in heavy

dependence on quality as both an endogenous and exogenous factor. This results
in the other elements that aid in quality control to have an ever-expanding role.
Procurement function therefore plays a key role in getting the best from the best
available in the open market. It plays a predominant role in the in ensuring quality
in an organization. Improving quality therefore should shift from desire to
compulsion in the quality assurance of supply agencies.

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6.5 SUPPLY CHAIN RE-ENGINEERING

Business structure is continuously changing from one phase to another, and today
has reached the stage of professionalism where it is revolving around customer
focus in a big way. These changes have shown remarkable improvement in
company performance measures such as quality, costs, services and lead times.
Hammer & Champy in 1993 identified these changes and improvements and
packaged these ideas into concept of ‘business re-engineering’, which was later
termed as ‘business process re-engineering’ (BPR).

The areas in common between BPR and SCM seems to be very few at a
cursory glance, but SCM is not a traditional improvement technique, but a
philosophy that helps in improvement not involved with functional reviews, as
highlighted by Stevens’ model of supply chain integration, which we have seen in
our earlier units. However, in an introspection of BPR & SCM reveals that there
is more than one common link between the two. Business transformation from
the concept ‘what we make we sell’ to a more flexible concept of ‘what the
market want us to sell’ can effectively be achieved after a competitive analysis
and a supply chain diagnostic review. It is well understood, that effective
transformation is only possible after a series of phased step involving
technological reorganization, attitudinal and organizational attribute, and integration
between the competition and customer demands.

The comparison between SCM & BPR is as shown in the table 6.1
Table 6.1 : As Adopted from Deshmukh & Mohanty, 2004 (Essentials of SCM)

Business (Process) Re- The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business
Engineering process to achieve dramatic improvements in critical,
contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality,
(Hammer & Champy, 1993) service and speed.

Supply Chain Management The management of material suppliers, production facilities, and
(Stevens’ 1989) distribution services and customer linked together via the feed
forward flow of material and the feedback flow of information.

Achieving internal integration is a desirable stage, however, performance of

pockets of excellence is generally downgraded (from customer’s viewpoint) due
to poorly performing suppliers and customers in the supply chain. In order to
understand this further a wider perspective of the supply chain needs to be taken
keeping in mind the 12 steps of BPI, as evolved by Harrington, to streamline the
process. They are:
• Elimination of bureaucracy
• Eliminating duplication
• Value added assessment
• Simplification
• Process cycle time reduction
• Error proofing
• Upgrading
• Simple language
• Standardization
• Supplier partners
• Broader picture improvement
• Automation 13

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From the above its evident that the first 9 steps are operational, step 10 is for
supplier side, and step 11 is for the customer satisfaction. Therefore, to attain this
step, if a radical redesign is taken, business process integration turns to business
process re-engineering, in the supply chain scenario. Side by side in the Stevens’
model step 3 moves to step 4, i.e. full integration is achieved. Therefore, this
integration involves extending the internal management to supplier focus and
customer orientation in order to create a strategic partnership, by reducing the
suppliers. Customer understanding will in a big way change the entire philosophy
from pushing products to selling goods as per customer requirements. Backward
integration is a very difficult process in supply chain integration, since; it involves
a change in inter-company attitudes from adversarial to that of mutual support,
which is in fact very crucial to a successful supply chain integration.

We should as a matter of fact, never lose sight of the fact that business in the
supply chain, is directly dependent on customer finances which enables the
continuity of the supply chain. Therefore, the strategies in the supply chain should
have common aim of improving the performance of the chain from the
perspective of the consumer/customer. Stevens’ integration, in stage 4 of the
supply chain is generally successful because of the financial position enjoyed by
the big companies. Such companies generally bend rules of supply chain
integration and manipulate smaller members of the chain to their financial ends, in
order to benefit the most. Therefore, backward integration is a contentious issue.
Both internal and external integration is required to be achieved for improving
performance in the supply chain management, under ideal conditions. Yet, internal
or external or a combination approach may be the goal depending upon product,
industry, market conditions or where advantage could be gained for the supply
chain. Though, Stevens’ model suggests that external integration, without internal
reorganization does not exploit all the benefits of true supply chain integration.

Now, let us see whether BPR internal re-engineering is equivalent to the

functional and internal integration stages in the Stevens’ model? Actually, the first
and the final stages are similar in both BPR & Stevens’ model. Initially, non-
existent planning and control structures across departments are optimized to
departmental goals resulting in customer necessities not being catered to, but the
final structure is customer centric with major changes in culture, structure and
technology. The intermediate steps are different, since BPR calls for one-leap
changes on a process-by-process basis. Whereas, Stevens’ model opts for
functional integration, followed by internal integration. Functional integration in
BPR is not necessary, only the process should be sought and redesigned. Efforts
to optimize a function are considered a waste in this system. The functional
integration stage, does bring together a trans-departmental view which, if
performed correctly, will lead to improved operating performance (Deshmukh &
Mohanty). Improvement in the overall performance level and integrating of the
core functional areas as one single function does negate the poor performance of
the surrounding functions. Therefore, It is mandatory to initially bind the functions
along a process line, and then integrate the appropriate cross-functional processes
at a later stage.

Therefore in spite of BPR being a later model, Stevens’ model is still valid in the
light of BPR concept, though more details of reorganization stages are required.
Therefore, cross-relationship between both the stages is to be highlighted more
vigorously. This can be achieved by examining the pre-requisites and techniques
used in integration stages of SCM and in virtuality, i.e. by philosophy.

Let us now see the various categories covering the parallels of essentials
between SCM & BPR, through this table:

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Table 6.2: Parallels of Essentials between SCM & BPR (excerpts from Hammer &
Champy, Davenport, Grover et al, Stevens & Deshmukh & Mohanty, 2004)

Area for change BPR (Business Process Re- Supply Chain Management
engineering) Terminology

Process • Elimination of wastes • Reduce non-value added activities

• Speed up process • Lead time reduction
• Concentration on core • SCM positions each firm to do
processes what it does best

People • Board level commitment • Board level commitment with a

• A management that questions logistics champion at board
• A workforce that questions • A management that questions
• Multi-skilled workforce • A workforce that questions
• Attitudinal changes • Multi-skilled workforce
• Attitudinal changes
Technology • Technological changes • Technological changes
• IT a key to BPR • IT a key to SCM
• Break the rule • Partnership sourcing
• Treat vendors as adversaries • Deep penetration to customers
bases
Innovation • Customer focus • Constant innovation at the
• Constant innovation interfaces of the company
• Constant • Streamline processes
• product/process innovation
Analysis • Analysis by paralysis is not • Aggregate modeling can aid the
beneficial redesign strategy and take a
• Take a holistic view systems view

6.6 SUMMARY
This unit highlights the common foundations, which underlie both SCM & BPR
philosophies, which are indicative of the important difference between the two,
the drive for improved business operations. Those who follow the SCM
philosophy would have traversed the path as BPR after having re-engineered
own processes. The existing philosophies such as SCM (integrated) as mentioned
in this unit covers a large portion of the BPR ideas, yet a few ideas have to be
added to the model:
• Radical approach for internal integration.
• Continuity in step changeover improvements, and strategic placements of
these ideas on the marketplace.
The various points for learning in SCM re-engineering are:
• SCM is not a traditional improvement technique but that which facilitates
improvement, not associated with functional/departmental reviews that focus
internally.
• Transforming a business from inward looking to outward looking.
• Integration being the mainstay between the customers and competition.
• Inquisitiveness throughout the organization will facilitate re-engineering.
• This is applicable at the higher echelons as these positions give a wider
perspective, seeking core processes and creating leaner structures, a must
for SCM integration through re-engineering.
• The change management associated with re-engineering has to be handled
smoothly and skillfully.
Sustaining the spirit of re-engineering throughout the corporate culture is a big
issue that requires serious attention. Continual re-engineering allows a company’s
quality initiatives and re-engineering to be completely and effectively integrated,
with an added advantage of the involvements of the high teams for continual re-
engineering.
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6.7 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

1) Explain in detail the process of re-engineering.
2) What are the benefits of re-engineering in supply chain?
3) Explain the benefits of integrated approach for implementation of SCM.
4) It is a fact; SCM and BPR have a common goal and are interrelated.
Explain the sentence with examples.
5) Explain the parallels between the BPR & SCM philosophy.

6.8 REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED FURTHER

READINGS
Burt, Dobler & Starling, World Class Supply Management, Tata Mc Graw-Hill
Deshmukh & Mohanty (2004), Essentials of SCM, Jaico Publishing House,
Mumbai-23.
Simchi-Levi, David Kaminsky, Philipsimchi-Levi, Edith(2004), Designing And
Managing The Supply Chain, Tata McGraw-Hill
Mentzer, Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management, Sage India Publishers

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