Critical review of new article on Supply chain management

This critical review examines a new article on supply chain management, focusing on the impact of technology and collaborative business in the digital economy. It discusses the importance of automation, faster time to market, collaborations, and anticipating issues in the supply chain. The article highlights the need for businesses to adapt to technological innovations and streamline their back-end operations for greater efficiency.

Running Head: Critical review of new article on Supply chain management 1
Critical review of new article on Supply chain management

Critical review of news article on Supply chain management
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Introduction
Multiple definitions of the term supply chain management can be found all over the literature.
The diversity in the definitions can be explained in the fact that SCM by its very nature is
evolutionary and multidisciplinary (Ellram & Cooper, 2014). However, irrespective of how the
term is defined, it is certain that since 2000, there has been immense change in the environment
of supply chain activities. Over the next paragraphs, a newspaper article that deals with the
impact of technology and collaborative business on digital economy and supply chain.
Body
The article “No sleep from MHD” author Charles Pauka talks about the importance of
automation and latest technology in bringing about a change in how supply channels are
managed. There are certain positives and negatives that emerges as listed below-
Faster time to market
The article talks about how the rise in online shopping has lead to an increase in service
expectation in terms of the time frame between order and dispatch. Customers are ready to
penalize the retailers who perform poorly on this front (Pauka, 2019). In today’s retail world, the
clock starts ticking as soon as the order for a new product arrives. Thus, wholesalers relying on
outdated and complex methods involving manual intervention for record keeping won’t be able
to compete with another who uses a system that is fully automated. Therefore, the wholesalers
who have till date used traditional methods of supply chain that relied heavily on manual
processes have to shift towards automation for survival. In a fully automated supply chain,
intuitive processes would help in identifying quickest picking route, defining the best way of
allocating orders and automatically print items like invoices, dispatch notes and bar codes.
As seen the author here presents arguments in favor of adopting technological innovations in
supply chain management. Researches about the trends have long pointed about the impact of
technological innovations on the enthronement of supply chain management (Hugos, 2018). The
researchers have pointed to the fact that the information system associated with supply chain
used to be dumb terminals before 2000 (Stank, Autry, Daugherty & Closs, 2015). The dumb

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terminals characterizing the supply chain were capable of accepting, displaying and transmitting
data but demonstrated little capability in decision making ability. However, since the turn of
century, companies started using process enhancing technologies like RFID to augment existing
dumb terminals of supply chain networks (Stank, Autry,Daugherty & Closs, 2015). Now the
transformation in supply chain is being led by artificial intelligence and predictive technologies
which are bringing in automation in supply chain to lead the transformation.
More collaborations
The article expresses the need of putting demand prediction ability into the supply chain so that
there is enough stock of the product when it is demanded for. Retailers also want that the back
end processes of the wholesalers should be streamlined. In the article the author also talks about
using ERP as a tool to pull together business data provide actionable insights in identifying the
gaps that can then be taken advantage of.
However, although the researchers talk about streamlining the back end operations, tit does not
illustrate the way to achieve the same. The article does not talk about the importance of bringing
in more collaboration between the different departments and managing multiple relationships
across the supply chain (Lambert & Cooper, 2000). Thus instead of being a chain of one-to-one
or business-to-business relationship, the researchers opine that supply chain is actually a network
of multitude of business relationships. SCM also helps the companies to trap into the synergies
of inter and intracompany integration (Hugos, 2018). Thus, SCM deals with the excellence of
total business process and is a representation of new way of managing relationships in business.
Researchers argue that when there are fictions in between the business processes it leads to loss
of national productivity, lowering of working capital and increase in operational costs (Fayezi &
Zomorrodi, 2016). According to another article, fiction between different processes has cost
Australia $ 29 billion in a year (Pauka,2018).
Thus, in order to stream line the back-end processes of the whole sellers, it is important to
achieve collaborative buyer-seller relationship. Collaboration can be the key towards achieving
greater efficiency and common goals (Stank, Autry,Daugherty & Closs, 2015). So, by not
mentioning about collaboration, the article actually is providing no practical solutions for the
businesses who like to streamline their back end operations. So, basically as the writer talks

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about what needs to be done, he does not talk about how the business man can go about
achieving the same.
Researchers have also illustrated pointers that have traditionally hindered collaborations.
Researchers thus talk about lack of trust between the partners involved in training and greater
emphasis on short term goals as compared to planning for the future as inhibitors to
collaboration(Hugos, 2018). However, researchers opine that companies are embracing greater
collaboration so as to reduce work redundancy and duplication thereby leading to streamlining of
work-flows and processes (Stank, Autry, Daugherty & Closs, 2015).
Anticipating issues with supply chain
Although talking about the current disruptive technologies and the need to incorporate them in
the supply chain, the article by Charles does not talk about the future. Charles talks about how
ERP can be incorporated within the supply chain to pull together business data and drive
actionable insights. However researchers are of the opinion that future belongs to autonetic
technologies which combine predictive data analytics with decision making capabilities so that
breakdown in supply chain can be anticipated and alleviated before they actually occur (Stank,
Autry, Daugherty & Closs, 2015).
Going forward, the diversified AI based applications along with predictive technologies would
assist in learning from mistakes in supply chain and according adopt the networks in real time
(Christopher, 2016). Although many firms would adapt these technologies to be ahead of the
competition, there would be some who would lag in implementation owing to the expenses
involved during installation (Stank, Autry, Daugherty & Closs, 2015).
Conclusion
The article talks about how technological innovations are bringing in a rapid change in the arena
of supply chain management. The ideas propounded are backed by numerous researches in this
area. However, the author while expressing the need to achieve certain things does not illustrate
the way to achieve it. Also the author has not shed light on the future of supply chain.

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Reference
Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.
Ellram, L. M., & Cooper, M. C. (2014). Supply Chain Management: It's All About the
Journey, Not the Destination. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 50(1), 8-20.
Fayezi, S., & Zomorrodi, M. (2016). Supply Chain Management: Developments, Theories and
Models. In Handbook of Research on Global Supply Chain Management (pp. 313-340).
IGI Global.
Hugos, M. H. (2018). Essentials of supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons.
Lambert, D. M., & Cooper, M. C. (2000). Issues in supply chain management. Industrial
marketing management, 29(1), 65-83.
Pauka, C. (2018). AI power – from MHD magazine. Retrieved from
https://www.tandlnews.com.au/2018/12/07/article/ai-power-from-mhd- magazine/
Pauka, C. (2019). No sleep – from MHD. Retrieved from
https://www.tandlnews.com.au/2019/03/12/article/no-sleep-from-mhd/
Stank, T., Autry, C., Daugherty, P., & Closs, D. (2015). Reimagining the 10 megatrends
that will revolutionize supply chain logistics. Transportation Journal, 54(1), 7-32.

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Appendix
Figure 1 No sleep-from MHD (Pauka, 2019)

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