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Supply Chain

In: Business and Management

Submitted By mingjin159
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A supply chain is dynamic and involves the constant flow of product, information, and funds between a variety of stages in supply chain. These supply chain stages are customers, retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, service provider and raw material suppliers.
An example of stages and different flows in the supply chain would be, when a customer purchases Acer Computer online, the supply chain includes the customer, Acer's website, the Acer assembly plant, and all of Acer's suppliers and their suppliers. The website will provide the customer with information regarding pricing, product variety, and product availability. After making a product choice, the customer would enter their order information and pay for the product ordered. The customer can return later to the website to check the status of their order. Stages further up the supply chain would use the customer order information to fill the order. This process involves an additional flow of product, information, and funds between various stages of the supply chain.These examples shows that the customer is an integral part of the supply chain. The main purpose of any supply chain is to satisfy customer needs, in the process generating profits for itself. Supply chain activities begin with a customer order and end when a satisfied customer has paid for his or her purchase. It is important to know that information, funds, and product flows along both directions of this chain. In the real world, manufacturer may receive material from several suppliers and then supply several distributors. Thus, most supply chains are actually networks. Each supply chain will depend on both the customer's needs and the roles of the stages involved having an appropriate design. In the case of Acer, the manufacturer may fill customer orders directly. As Acer is base of builds-to-order and so do not have a retailer, wholesaler, or

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