The Supply chain analyst is a person who helps improve efficiency in shipping procedures. He is responsible for all the records and helps employees from warehouses develop the most competent plan for receiving and packing products. Every company wishes to be the best in the industry, and in achieving this, it has to work hard and make sure there are no complaints from customers in the delivery of orders. The analyst researches on the market to ensure that all products are available in the company. He is responsible for ensuring smooth flow of orders from the point of shipping till the time it gets to the consumer.

Shipping supervisors’ work closely with the supply chain analyst, to ensure all orders are ready to leave with the transport trucks. He monitors the trucks to confirm that they arrive at their destination on time and with the goods intact. In cases where there are mistakes in the orders the supply chain analyst rectifies the mistakes and investigates the root problem to ensure that it does not happen again. He coordinates the delivery of the goods in the trucks to ensure punctuality.

Since analysts of supply chain study the market, they are in a position to know about the new trends in the market. They make the company informed of these changes. Many companies rely on the analysts to determine if their current systems could be improved for better productivity. If the company realizes that these new trends can help improve efficiency, the analyst is assigned responsible to train the managers and the shipping personnel. Apart from researching on the new trends, a supply chain analyst also researches on new business opportunities that the company might be interested in. These opportunities may help the company to expand and, therefore, increase the profit.

Simply speaking, the method necessitates that management must identify six quality situations on both plus side and minus side of the average or normal quality required from a product.  These different situations of product quality are decided by the materials, equipments and methods employed in a process, and the technical skill level of workers engaged in the process. The management must monitor the production processes constantly to ensure that the standards stick to the range of mean or average quality. If management becomes successful in its job, it is statistically unimaginable for quality deviations to crop up.  The possibility of the production of below-standard products is 0.00034% as per Six sigma theory.

The sigma theory has not evolved over night. Its roots can be traced back to Carl Frederic Gauss (177-1855), who introduced the normal curve.  However, its present form is the credit of an engineer from Motorola, named Bill Smith. The implementation of sigma theory has offered Motorola huge bottom-line results. The company reported savings of approximately US$ 17 billion up to date because of Six Sigma. Observing Motorola’s performance, since then, thousands of companies from different parts of the world have implanted the sigma theory in their processes.

Lean is all about identifying and removing wastes and non-value added activities from the issue in concern. So, lean supply chain may be defined as a group of organizations linked in a straight line by the flows of products, services and information that work together to lower cost and waste by effectively and efficiently procuring what is required for meeting individual customer demand. The lean aspect of supply chain requires waste and non-value added activities be eliminated from supply chain through continuous improvement.

The primary concept of lean was the brain child of Henry Ford. In 1920s, he applied the technique of ‘continuous flow’ to Ford’s assembly line process. The practice reduced Ford’s costs and throughput time and improved the quality. The approach achieved recognition of the most advanced manufacturing system until Toyota Production System was introduced by two executives from Toyota after their visits in Ford’s assembly plant in 1950s. Toyota learned a great deal from the study of Ford’s operation and based its lean approach on what it saw. However, Toyota was able to accomplish something that Ford couldn’t do: a system that could handle variety.

Soon Toyota comprehended that optimizing a segment of the process is totally different from optimizing entire process. To bring true changes, they had to incorporate customers and supplier in the process. Without synchronization among all major players, the timing and features of goods provided by the suppliers will continuously hamper manufacturer’s performance. As a result, the idea of lean supply chain comes into forth.

While choosing a parcel delivery service, one should consider whether the company is able to provide economical rate, speedy and on time delivery and delivery of parcel at perfect condition. It is also necessary to ensure whether the type of parcel service he/she requires is available in the company. General services include next-day delivery, same-day courier, gift courier, import and export transportation, online courier etc. Based on these criteria, different worldwide parcel services are briefly portrayed below.

At first, ‘worldwide parcel services’ may come into discussion. The company is capable of delivering parcels to almost anywhere in the world. One can trust it to get the parcel delivered not only to specified location, but also on time and with consummate service.  For meeting the requirements of various customer classes, the firm offers next-day parcel delivery for UK mainland, parcel delivery service throughout Europe and the rest of the world between 1 to 7 days.

Another famous parcel delivery service provider is DHL. It offers a wide range of customized and innovative transportation solutions, linking worldwide coverage with local expertise.  It has a global network that covers almost all countries and territories of the world. The packages of DHL are parcel/document express delivery services, international mail solutions, supply chain solutions, freight by ocean, air, rail and road and so on.

Next, it comes to FedEx – another trusted parcel and freight service. It provides businesses and individual customer worldwide with an all-inclusive portfolio e-commerce, transportation and business services.  FedEx provides worldwide package/envelop delivery service as well as freight delivery service.

From financial statements’ perspective, inventory is an account posted on the balance sheet. The balance of inventory account on the balance sheet represents a point in time or instant. Hence, while calculating ‘inventory turnover’ or ‘days in inventory’, dividing the costs of goods sold by the inventory reported on an instant could be misleading. As costs of goods sold is calculated for the entire accounting period- such as one year, one must determine the average balance in inventory for the same accounting period as costs of goods sold.

Generally, the average inventory balance is calculated by adding the figures reported on just two dates: the first day of the accounting period and the last day of the accounting period and dividing the total by two. This method is suitable for companies that experience very low fluctuation in inventory throughout the year.

As firms often schedule the end of their accounting period at their dull time of the year, the calculation of inventory balance using only two points in time could be misleading. At the dull time, the balances in the inventory account will be down and will not be the proper indication of the entire year. As a result, for companies with high fluctuation in inventory throughout the year, another method is used. In this method, the inventory value on the very first day of the year and inventory value on the last day of each month is noted. There will be 13 figures. These figures are added, and the total is divided by 13. The result obtained is the average inventory. While determining financial ratios, one should remember the differences of inventory calculation methods.

Many well known companies use third-party logistics to take care of services such as inventory management to ensure quality and reduce expenses.

An inventory is a stock of store of goods. It is an extremely important part of the business. The amount and monetary value of inventory carried by different types of firms vary widely; however, a normal firm generally invests 30 percent of its current assets and 90 percent of its working capital in inventory. One widely used measure of managerial performance relates to return on investment (ROI), which is profit after taxes divided by total assets.  Because inventory may represent a significant portion of total assets, a reduction in inventory can result in a significant increase in ‘ROI’.

Management has two basic functions regarding inventory. One is to establish a system of keeping track of items in inventory, and the other is to make decisions about the quantity to order and when to order. For effective inventory management, a company must have the following:

• A system for tracking the inventory on hand
• A reliable demand forecasting system that includes the possible forecasting error
• Exact information about lead time and lead time variability
• Knowledge of inventory holding costs, ordering costs and shortage costs
• A classification system for inventory items

Absence of proper inventory management system can result in both under-stocking and overstocking of items. Under-stocking results in missed deliveries, lost sales, dissatisfied customers and production bottleneck; overstocking unnecessarily ties up funds that might be more productive elsewhere. So, proper management of inventory is a must for successful companies.

The concept of lean manufacturing was initially developed in Japan at Toyota Motor Company. The concept has brought rapid changes in the way products are manufactured. Lean production is quietly different from the traditional manufacturing techniques. Such as, traditional system emphasizes on holding inventory, but lean production attempts to keep inventory level as low as possible.

At the center of lean production is the determination of value-adding activities. Value is something associated with a product/service for which customers are ready to pay. Apart from value-adding activities, all other activities in the manufacturing process are considered waste.  According to Toyota Production System, seven wastes are noticed in the manufacturing process- overproduction, transportation, waiting time, inventory, processing, motion and scrap. Lean production engages all resources and energies to manufacture value adding elements while recognizing and removing these non-valued adding activities.

Key benefits of lean system are high quality, reduced inventory, flexibility, reduced lead time, increased productivity and equipment utilization, reduced amount of scrap and network and reduced space requirements. The risks stem from the absence of buffers. For example, lack of extra personnel or inventory stockpiles to continue operation if something goes wrong.

Cost reduction is always vital, but organizations should not take it as the only top priority. They should attempt to improve all the priorities according to their SWOT analysis. Studies reveal that world class manufacturing companies have followed some generic techniques to achieve the recognition. These techniques are:

Reduction of set up time: reducing the setup time on bottleneck steps or processes improves the production speed. Reducing setup time on other steps or processes provides little benefits.

Formation of product groups/cells: the processes are categorized into families of products or services by applying group technology. This is also known as cellular manufacturing. This technique is particularly useful except for the pure job shops where product cells are not stable.

Reduction of throughput time: A simple way of cutting the throughput time is adjusting the amount of work in process (WIP) so that starving or blocking never happens in the process. Apart from this, improving the capacity of bottleneck, close scheduling, reducing the operational steps required per piece etc. can be effective in reduction of throughput time.

Putting off product mutation: If this practice is implemented at the design phase, the mutation or variation required by customers can be put off until the final operation. It makes the management of mass customization system insignificant.

Removal of unimportant steps in the process: removing unnecessary processes from the operation is very important. It helps focus on vital processes and make the control of operation simple.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) can be defined as a management of a chain or a network of interconnected businesses. The goal is to fulfil customer’s needs and in the same efficiently manage the supply chain. Companies involved in the supply chain have different roles like supplying raw materials, manufacturing the goods, warehousing the goods, handling the logistics, etc. Supply Chain Management is therefore very complex area to handle if we compare for example to the management of an individual company’s activities.

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In SCM there are three main flows: the product flow, the information flow and the financial flow. In product flow, raw materials move from supplier to manufacturer and finished goods from manufacturer to customer. The information from customer orders and forecast move upstream in the chain to the end of chain to suppliers. The financial flow includes payment from customer and manufacturers against supplied goods and materials.

In SCM the goal is to manage the chain efficiently as possibly to minimize cost and maximize revenue. Efficiency need to understand in many different ways in SCM. Efficient supply chain has short enough lead time to fulfil customer need and still it does not have any extra stocks any point of the chain.

Environments in different industries vary very much. Because of this, supply chain management differs depending on the industry. Industries, like pharma, has very long lead times and due to this it is mandatory to hold stocks in different points of the chain to fulfil customer need with high service level. In daily consumer good industry lead times are short and raw materials turn into finished product and are used very fast.

To manage supply chain more efficiently many companies use ERP and SCM software to handle their three flows accurately and also to share information though the supply chain. Some kind of software is almost mandatory for bigger companies to handle their activities.

SCM very complex thing with huge amount of variables which need to be taken in account. Supply chains are developing more complex as competition tightens all the time. Get the best information for your work here.