Critical Factors Affecting Supply Chain Management

Read these sections for an in-depth look at the supply chain management factors that affect a business' operations. These sections explore environmental factors, internal company issues, governmental factors, the role of IT, logistics, suppliers, and more.

Introduction

Supply chain management is applied by companies across the globe due to its demonstrated results such as delivery time reduction, improved financial performance, greater customer satisfaction, building trust among suppliers, and others. According to D'Amours, Ronnqvist, and Weintraub, companies resort to supply chain practices to improve their performance. Thus, it is important to first understand how their supply chains work. Figure 1 shows a generalized supply chain in the forest products industry.


Fig. 1. Forest and wood products supply chain

Figure 2 illustrates another example of the steps in a supply chain for wood pallet manufacturing industries. This process begins with logging operations, logs are then sent to the sawmill where cants and/or pallet parts are sent to the wood pallet manufacturer (pallet operations). Lastly, once wood pallets are manufactured, they are sent to a distributor or directly to the final customer.

Fig. 2. Hypothesized wood pallet manufacturing process

Fig. 2. Hypothesized wood pallet manufacturing process

Source: Henry Quesada, Rado Gazo, and Scarlett Sanchez, https://learn.saylor.org/pluginfile.php/1282509/mod_resource/content/1/Critical%20Factors%20Affecting%20Supply%20Chain%20Management%20-%20CC%20BY%203.0.pdf
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