Supply Chain Management: Global Aspects, International Logistics, and Emerging Trends

Running Head: SUPPLY CHAIN
Supply Chain
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Introduction
In the current business world, competition is a daily activity; thus numerous
organizations are striving to reduce ever form of inefficiency from their operations. The supply
chain is one of the organization's operations, and the most commonly used paradigm used in
achieving a competitive advantage is lean thinking and agile supply chain. Supply chain
management entails procurement, distraction, transportation, logistic, outsourcing, demand
management quality management and customer’s satisfaction among many others (Mujkić, Qorri
& Kraslawski, 2018). The following is a report of supply chain management, with focus on the
global aspects, international logistics and emerging trends.
Supply chain
Supply chain refers to different business entities that ensure the flow of resources and
products from different points of production to the consumption point to fulfil the end user’s
needs (Gligor, 2016). On the other hand supply, chain management is part of every organization
management system that has become significant in today's completive business environs. Supply
chain appeared back in 1982 and majorly focused on the logistics management between
organizations. Over the decades it has developed through different stages: functional
management, internal management, and external integration. Supply change management lies on
four major factors: information, customer demand, and time and response strategy for problems
(Gereffi & Lee, 2012). In the current business environment, the success if business depend on the
integration n of the business and the network relationships, thus poor supply chain management
is more likely to lead to supply chain failures . Since the success or failure of the supply chain is
determined by the end consumers. Providing the correct product and the correct cost, at the

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correct moment to the targeted consumers is not a cornerstone to competitive success but also the
vital aspect to existence (Bath & Ozturen, 2013). Therefore, customer’s satisfaction is a key
element in every organization is establishing a proper supply chain strategy. The proper strategy
thus will be only being achieved after understanding the constraints of the marketplace to enable
it to respond to customer demands on time and price quickly. The logistics of providing
consumers with the right product is always complex.
These four factors when well addressed, and then the organization is guaranteed of
customers’ satisfaction, that eventually impacts its competitive advantage in the market place. To
achieve this, every organization’s supply chain thus needs to be agile (Reimann, & Ketchen,
2017). As much as supply chain entails different parties such as suppliers, retailers, wholesalers,
the chain ultimately depends on o the customers. It is significant for all the organizations to
ultimately understand their respective customer's needs since the whole process begins with a
customer order and ends up with customer’s satisfaction.
Supply chain failure
Supply chain failure refers to the probability that part of a supply chain will not
effectively function resulting in malfunctioning of the whole chain. Taherdoost and
Keshavarzsaleh, (2016) denotes that any event in the SC has a direct influence on the firm’s
ability to endure with its manoeuvres in supplying the best product to the customer at the right
time and price. Some of these supply chain failures include bullwhip effect intermediaries
strikes, environmental changes, management and operational failures, political instability, and
changes from customers in the last minute. To avoid these hiccups in the supply chain, current
companies are now focusing on the lean, agile and agile Supply chain strategies. Global

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companies thus need to improve on the supply chain strategies and management goals such as
improving customer’s services and improving product delivery more sustainably (Verbeek,
2018). In this context, organizations thus will aim at reducing the supply chain cost, raising the
efficiency and actively managing all the risk that might arise during the distribution of resources.
To achieve this, numerous global and local companies thus are focusing on the lean production
paradigm (Durach, Kembro & Wieland, 2017).
Global supply chain management
In the current world, business entities face different challenges that affect their supply
chain. Globalization has played a major role in developing numerous organizations and thus
plays a major role in supply chain management (Maltz, 2012). The global supply chain tends to
be complex as companies aspire to satisfy customer’s needs. The complexity in most cases
results in supply chain failure.
Supply chain sustainability
Supply chain sustainability is a new holistic view of supply chain process, management and
logistics to address the environmental, social, legal and economic aspects of the supply chain
components. Sustainable supply chain proposed back in 2007 by Linton and has taken
transformation to other adoption such as green supply chain (Jilani, Ali, & Khan, 2018). Factors
that affect the supply chain include carbon waters emission that pollutes the environment and
affect both the health of workers and society. The new view of supply chains thus requires
supply chain organization to demonstrate corporate social responsibility, and this can be
achieved through various steps:
a) identification of critical issues and improve areas in the entire supply chain

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b) application of the supply chain management’s measurement tools to track progress and
identify wanes
c) the setting of the supply chain objectives concerning the global sustainability goals such a
being carbon neutral
d) strive to collaborate with other sustainable suppliers to help in waste reduction
e) Organizations are required to marinate accountability throughout the process.
Lean production paradigm
Lean production originated from the Toyota Production System that was initiated with a
focus to provide efficient use of resources through level scheduling. Lean refers to the strategy
of developing a value stratum to reduce and eliminating wastes such as time wastes to enhance
customer experience and satisfaction (Chen, 2012). The main goal of the system was to
eliminate all waste during the production system and create customer’s valued products. The lean
was later coined to a better way of managing customer relations in the supply chain. Lean
thinking is quite significant in the global supply chain as the principle enables the delivery of
products that are by the customer’ requirements. The major aim of lean thinking thus is to
transom the supply management form individual operations to collaborative operations that
ensure a perfect flow of products to the end user. Lean supply chain strategies thus should focus
on, quick order booking, wastage reduction; reduce the shipment time and the addition of
product value to suit the end customer (Wang, 2014). The pipeline selection identifies four major
generic supply chain strategies that have the capability of improving the attributes of products
and services: lean; agile, lean and agile.
Agile Supply Chain

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Agility refers to the ability to revolutionize a business involvement into a turbulent place
of competition and struggle for success through detecting the required changes and responding
with all capabilities (Mirabi, Hatami, & Karamad, 2018). An agile supply chain connects both
the company and the market with a focus on the predicted market changes and capitalizing on the
changes to provide fast delivery and lead time flexibility of products to consumers. The agility
deploys different tools such as technology and technological methods to solve the problems.
Leagile supply chain
In vast products, services and markets, the difference in demand, predictability, vitality,
and stability. Due to such existence, companies need the agile supply chain to provide leverage
on both the lean and agile systems. Since the creation of a new supply chain strategy majorly
depends on two aspects: customer satisfaction and the understanding of the market place;
manufactures and supplies are expected to develop strategies that can meet the requirements
(Ciołek, 2016). As the lean focus on the elimination of wastes, while the agile focus on the
market knowledge liability focuses on the adaptation of a supply chain management by changes
in the market. Different technological advancements have facilitated the lean paradigm in supply
chain especially o the global organizations. Some of the advancements entail:
Application of Lean Paradigm is Supply chain management
Lean Warehousing and Distribution Operations
Numerous international organizations depend on warehouse and distribution channels in
ensuring the availability of the product to the destined customers at the right time and quality.
The effective and efficient global economy is significant to attain competitive advantage to these
international organizations. Lean warehousing thus plays a major role in the entire supply chain