Supply Chain Practices

The definition of "supply chain" seems to be common across authors than the definition of "supply chain management" (Cooper and Ellram 1993, La Londe and Masters 1994, Lambert, Stock, Ellram 1998). La Londe and Masters (1994) proposed that a supply chain is a set of firms that pass materials forward. Normally several independent firms are involved in manufacturing a product and placing it in the hands of the end user in a supply chain ¿ raw material and component producers, product assemblers wholesalers, retailer merchants and transportation companies are all members of a supply chain (La Londe and Masters 1994). By the same token SCM is defined as a process for designing, developing, optimizing, and managing the internal and external components of the supply system in a manner that is consistent with the overall objectives and strategies Sambasivan (2008).