SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Consumer Electronics: Supply Chain Management

Consumer Electronics: Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management

Heightened competition in global markets has led to the introduction of goods with short life cycles. At the same time, the demands of customers have increased, resulting organisations to invest in supply chain management. The notion of supply chain management has gained immense benefits from evolution of communication and transportation technology. A typical supply chain begins with procurement management of raw materials, manufactured at different sites. The materials are shipped to warehouses, which store the items or raw materials. From ware houses, the good are transported to retailing shops and delivered to customers. In order to improve service levels and lessen cost, supply chain strategies are devised for the purpose of fostering interactions between different levels of supply chain management. Supply Chain is also referred to as logistics network, which includes suppliers, manufacturers, raw material, warehouse, distribution channels, and customers' outlets (Janet et al, 2006).

Supply chain management presents a set of approaches, which are employed for streamlining the suppliers, manufacturers, and intermediately storage; so that goods can be produced in the right amount, with appropriate quality, and at an appropriate time, and delivered with optimum service level while managing cost.

Figure 1: Electronics Supply Chain (Source: Ebscohost)

Consumer Electronics Supply Chain

Consumer Electronics Supply Chain is no different from supply chains of other retailing businesses like furniture or food. The chain involves a number of stakeholders including suppliers, manufacturers, and customers. Figure 2 illustrates consumer electronic supply chain, which initiates from suppliers and terminates on customers. Suppliers are responsible for delivering the raw material for manufacturing electronic goods. Supplier hubs are channels where components of different suppliers can be found. Manufacturers receive those supplies and produce consumer electronics. For instance, SONY collects the electrical components from suppliers and manufacture LCDs. The goods are manufactured at SONY factories, from where they are made available on distribution centres. SONY also has its own retailer outlets, which allow them to directly interact with customers. The customers can be a channel customer. For instance, hypermarket is a channel customer, who picks up SONY products from the distribution centres and sells them to its customers. SONY sells to its customers in two ways: first, the company sells directly to buyers by having SONY retailing outlets. Secondly, they can also sell to their customers with the help of channel customers, who sell SONY products to their target segments.

Figure 2: Close Loop Supply Chain Management (Source: Ebscohost)

Key Issues

The key issues in consumer electronic supply chain can be one of the three types: strategic, tactical, and operational. The strategic issues deal with decisions, which have the potential to present long-lasting effects on the performance of the firms; these can include a number of decisions including product designing. For instance, an electronic manufacturing company may choose to outsource some parts of product designing and select other jobs to be done internally. The decisions also include deciding about location and number of warehouses, on installation of manufacturing ...