Chapter 1 - Introduction
A supply chain is basically a group of independent organizations connected together through the products and services that they separately and/or jointly add value on in order to deliver them to the end consumer while supply chain management is a set of approaches utilized to efficiently integrate suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, and stores, so that merchandise is produced and distributed at the right quantities, to the right locations, and at the right time, in order to minimize systemwide costs while satisfying service level requirements.

Supply chains can be triggered by product supply (commodities) or by customer demand (customized products). The degree of customization dictates how much and in which format the supplying company holds inventory: no stock at all, raw or basic materials only or sub-assemblies of their products as in the famous example of Dell computers. The strategies and associated decoupling of product supply from customer demand form a crucial part of supply chain management.

Supply Chain Council has developed the supply chain operations reference model (SCOR) that depicts the broad spectrum of generic functional processes in the supply chain and shows that the functional processes of plan, source, make, deliver and return take place within every stage of the supply chain.

When you start engaging in supply chain management, you will most likely be confronted with some of these questions: * How many products are you going to sell? * When and where are you going to sell them? * How much production do you need to schedule in your factory? * What are your raw and packaging materials you need in order to fulfill the production plan?

All of these belong to the functional Plan process, where demand and supply are balanced to develop a course of action to meet sourcing, production and