Integrative Supply Chain Management: Transportation, Challenges, and Strategies

This assignment discusses Integrative Supply Chain Management (SCM) and its various components, including the role of transportation in SCM. It evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of different modes of transportation such as road, air, and water transport. The tradeoffs between four supply chain objects are also discussed, along with two main challenges encountered in running an efficient supply chain: cost control and supplier partner relationship management. The assignment concludes by describing a strategy used to make some routes multi-drop and others single drop, which helps vendors offer lower rates across all routes.

Running head: Integrative Supply Chain Management
Integrative Supply Chain Management
[DATE]
[Company name]
[Company address]

Integrative Supply Chain Management 1
1)Role of transportation in SCM
In logistics , transportation plays an important role for the smooth running of logistics. Logistics
is defined as the management of the flow of goods from the origin point to the consumption
point. In logistics,various modes of transportation are used like air , land, sea transportation.
(Closs,2015) Transportation is considered as the largest component in terms of cost structures in
business logistics. The logistics managers, who are beating the competition, on the large extent
acknowledge transportation , in terms of cost saving drive , that will create value in the supply
chain. Transportation also provides an organization , opportunity of creating operational
efficiency and improvement in the bottom line.
2)Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different modes of transportation?
The strengths and weaknesses of different modes of transportation are-
 Road transport has the ability of loading and unloading of goods and services, in terms of
frequency of delivering of goods at the door to door location, but it also suffered from
several weaknesses like it involves a high cost for long distances and the productivity is
also low.
 Air Transport has the strength of highest speed in terms of delivering goods to remote
places with high reliability but it also suffers from several weaknesses like the cost is
high in terms of fuel consumption, and the adverse weather also affects the working .
(Rushton,2014)
 Water transport is the convenient mode of transportation in terms of heavy load
transportation and low maintenance cost,but the weakness is that it requires huge initial
investment.

Integrative Supply Chain Management 2
3.a)What were some of the tradeoffs you noticed between the four supply chain objects?
The tradeoffs that are noticed between the four supply chain objects are within distribution
components, between distribution components,between company functions and between external
organizations and company .
b)What were the two or three main challenges you encountered in running an efficient
supply chain?
The two main challenges that are encountered in running an efficient supply chain are the cost
control challenge in terms of increased operating costs, by rising in fuel, technology and labor
rates, and the second challenge is the supplier partner relationship management, as it is a difficult
task to make both of them mutually agreed in terms of standards and consistent results.
(Mangan,2016)
c)Describe the strategy you used and some specific techniques that turned out to be useful
(for instance concentrating product storage at certain locations and minimizing it at the
rest, or making some routes multi-drop and others single drop; etc.)
The strategy we used for making some routes multi-drop and others single drop is the fewer
carrier strategy of transportation, which helps the vendor in offering the lower rates across all the
routes,and to all the carriers. (Christopher,2016)

Integrative Supply Chain Management 3
References:
Closs, D. J., & Bolumole, Y. A. (2015). Transportation's Role in Economic Development and
Regional Supply Chain Hubs. Transportation Journal, 54(1), 33-54.
Rushton, A., Croucher, P., & Baker, P. (2014). The handbook of logistics and distribution
management: Understanding the supply chain. Kogan Page Publishers.
Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.
Mangan, J., & Lalwani, C. (2016). Global logistics and supply chain management. John Wiley &
Sons.