Supply Chain Management

Firms are acting more and more in networks, especially in industrial supply chains. Planning and controlling activities are realized in that supply chains e.g. for optimization of inventories. Apart from such advantages there are special risks in supply chains. In that case it is necessary to detect, to estimate and to regulate risks. Processes of control, alignment and regulation are not defined and established so far.

„Available to Promise“ can be regarded as the core concept of Supply Chain Management. It has become an integer part of modern software tools like SAP/APO and is being implemented in a growing number of companies. The author works out the potentialities and possible limitations of this concept and explains what remains to be done in order to make this risk management approach complete.

Against the background of Basel II it gets more and more important for a company to strengthen its self-financing power to ensure liquidity. You can do this by rising sales, reducing operating expenses or shortening working capital. These levers are positively influenced by Supply Chain Management (SCM). For this reason we pick two concepts of SCM to analyse their impact on the self-financing power.

The ability of reacting to expected changes in markets in a robust manner and the design of flexible supply chains as reaction to ongoing changes and challenges helps gaining advantages for companies with these capabilities. To achieve this, the early involvement of internal and external expertise is as important as the principal underlying correct method. In this contribution the design of a robust distribution system and a flexible supply chain was as much crucial as the choice of the optimal locations in the USA and Europe.

Advanced Planning or Supply Chain Planning constitutes a sub-task of Supply Chain Management. It focuses on planning of operational processes, and hence has its primary area of application in manufacturing and distribution of physical products. Advanced Planning Systems (APS) build upon databases of ERP systems. They enhance the latter by a concept of hierarchical planning which makes use of modern methods as developed in Operations Research and related fields. This article gives an overview of solution methods implemented in APS and modelling capabilities.

The implementation of object-identification without contact by Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) is in the meantime taken into consideration by many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to enhance on the one hand their internal workflows in production and logistics and on the other hand to satisfy customer demands. However, in the last years only little or superficial knowledge of this technology has been acquired. Hence, qualified and certified training for dealing with RFID is highly necessary. Process security shall thus be guaranteed internally and uniform standards within the supply chain regarding the implementation and application of RFID, can be substantiated.

The necessity to gain detailed knowledge about existing business processes is increasing continuously along with the complexity of the supply networks. The centre of the approach is therefore the modelling of inter-company business processes. Starting from the current requirements of the industry, the article describes a modelling method, which satisfies these demands while considering the supply feasibility. The presented modelling method is specified in the context of inter-company process controlling. Keywords:

Quantity flexibility contracts are a prevalent medium in industrial practice aiming at reducing demand and inventory risks with increased fill rates and higher responsiveness. Meanwhile researchers have proved the advantage of such contracts by simulation models. But it still lacks tangible methods for estimating negotiable costs and also for implementation on operational level. Against this background a software supported tool will be presented closing the gaps in scientific formulation of flexibility oriented contract clauses. Furthermore the tool enables an efficient display of additional costs and gives hints for the parameterisation of ERP-(Enterprise Resource Planning)-systems.

Production and logistics networks are distinguished by a permanently growing complexity and are nowadays more than ever forced to adapt fast to dynamically changing markets. These and other factors make an enterprise-spreading production planning and control more difficult. A new, promising approach is to take advantage of synchronisation phenomena in such dynamical systems. The production of individual enterprises in the network has to be synchronised on the basis of technical and physical aspects in order to render the whole network more efficient and more productive.

Planning and organising of value added processes can be optimized by supply chain management. Therefore, creating a virtual supply chain organization (VISCO) is suggested. The main tasks are building up a specific organization for the collaboration, applying modern information and communication technologies, and implementing innovative logistics systems in the VISCO. Furthermore, it is necessary to harmonize the different plans of the companies involved. With the help of a special value added management in the VISCO it is possible to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the value added process significantly.