Supply Chain Management

The increasing globalization gives western companies great new opportunities. Especially China gained increasing importance as a sourcing market in the last years. Despite these opportunities, a retreat of many companies from China could be witnessed recently. Among other factors, this is due to the fact that western companies cannot exert enough influence on the performance and price of their suppliers. This article presents tools and processes to successfully face this challenge and improve the own position of power as a customer.

In recent years machine and plant manufacturers transformed to providers of complex after-sales services. After that transformation, many companies have problems in managing their activities effectively and efficiently. There is a lack of transparency on the not longer material driven processes. Bosch Packaging Services AG, as a provider of extensive after-sales services for the packaging machines sold by Bosch, realized the needed transparency through the development of two software tools on the basis of the InCoCo-S Reference Model, a process reference model for industrial services. Now Bosch Packaging Services is in the position to offer sustainable service contracts with adequate prices and realistic performance levels.

To excel global players have to satisfy a multitude of requirements nowadays. Contradicting targets have to be resolved by value chain design on a regular basis, taking into consideration the complex setting of necessary decisions. This article explains how to identify and evaluate measures showcasing the source process.

The increasing competitive pressure leads to a reduction of the depth of value creation and therefore to a rising importance of suppliers. Additionally, globalization is the cause for a tighter international network in production. Asymmetries in interests can obstruct a cooperation between companies and may endanger the commercial success. The article describes asymmetries in interests in the cooperation with local as well as Chinese suppliers.

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.