Supply Chain Management

1) Introduction

Supply chain is considered as the backbone for the organisations and especially for the manufacturing companies. The manufacturing companies will have its special technological based setup in one part of the world and supplies across the world (Sokolov, 2014).

The company selected for the study is Samsung which is a Korean based Conglomerate headquartered in Seoul. The company was established in the year 1938 and now went on to be the global conglomerate. Samsung initially entered in the electronic industry and went on to add other portfolios to its business and has seen a tremendous growth over the years (Harald Dyckhoff, 2015).

Samsung electronics is the world’s second largest company in the area of information technology and the study will analyse the factors that determines the growth and the role of supply chain management.

2) Elements of supply chain

Samsung has its world class infrastructure to manufacture these electronics products and supplies across the world. The manufacturing units are located in Giheung, Korea, Austin, USA, Hwaseong, Korea and Chennai, India.

Figure 1: Manufacturing units of Samsung

Source: (Lambert, 2014)

Samsung is one such global player which has the best supply chain practices and is ranked fourth across the world. The company follow Six Sigma which helps in advanced planning and scheduling of activities (Harald Dyckhoff, 2015). To be a global leader in the field of supply chain management there are certain areas which needs to be planned and forecasted and it includes,

• Define
• Measure
• Analyse
• Enable
• Verify

Figure 2: Key elements

Source: (Sokolov, 2014)

There are key elements based on the development of the organisation over the years and it includes,

• Customer collaboration
• Outbound logistics
• Business
• Manufacturing
• Purchasing
• Inbound logistics
• Supplier collaboration(Lambert, 2014)

3) International business strategy

The international business strategy of Samsung is more into the electronics segment where they offer wide range of consumer electronics products. The evolution of the company had been started from capturing the local Korean market and later went on to be one among the global leader next to apple. Samsung electronics has started the world’s largest mobile plant in Vietnam (Ross, 2015).

The global strategy of Samsung is to increase the number of research and development centres and also by increasing the manufacturing units. This process will help the organisation to have a proper supply chain management and also to make the distribution with high accuracy and also at a faster rate (Harald Dyckhoff, 2015).

Asia – The Company had set up a research and development division in order to cater the needs of the people locally by supplying them the required electronic products.

USA –Samsung has its manufacturing unit in USA which will help the supply chain management process easier.

Vietnam – By considering the cheap labour and the availability of the raw materials Samsung has the world’s largest handset manufacturing setup (Ross, 2015).

Others locations – Samsung as a global player has its franchisees and also others who helps in reaching the electronic devise globally.

4) International supply chain design of Samsung

Samsung as an organisation during the year 2008 planned in investing across research and development centres and that had yielded the revenues. The international supply chain management of Samsung is based on the Six Sigma concepts which are getting followed (Lambert, 2014).

The relation between Six Sigma and supply chain managementbrings the best supply chain management technique. The idea was started in the year 1990s for Samsung which helped in synergising between the two techniques and later the sensation was felt in the year 2004.

Samsung is one such company to adoptSix Sigma apart from Motorola and Dabbawalas who were popular in incorporating this technique (Harald Dyckhoff, 2015).

Figure 3: Six Sigma and Samsung

Source: (Kulkarni, 2015)

Samsung had four key aspects to go for Six Sigma and they are,

• Rapid planning for the forecast to market changes
• Predicting demand with information integration
• Real time delivery to the customer
• Global production planning

As a result of the meeting demands Samsung started the concept of global production where the electronic products are manufactured locally and supplied locally. This has been the greatest strength of Samsung over the years and has gained its customers in the market. As a result of this Samsung is the second leader in the market of electronics next to Apple which is one of the significant achievements (Harald Dyckhoff, 2015).

5) Elements of supply chain management

The elements of supply chain management vary and the most important one for Samsung are as below.

There are key elements based on the development of the organisation over the years and it includes,

Outbound logistics – Outbound logistics includes the transport of goods or the goods which are coming into Samsung for further processing (Lambert, 2014).

Manufacturing – Samsung manufactures the electronic devices using the best infrastructure facility and has the state of art structure.

Inbound logistics–Inbound logistics is one of the key elements as Samsung has the best plan in supplying the goods manufactured(Ross, 2015).

Supplier collaboration –Samsung has its collaboration with other players in other countries where they do not have the manufacturing units.

Finance – Samsung had invested more in the development of research and development which helped in better supply chain management (Sokolov, 2014).

Communication – It is the important factor to complete the supply chain management process as a whole.

6) Areas of improvement

It is important that organisations take the areas of improvement towards the overall development. Supply chain management is one such vital area which the manufacturing units should have a hold on to be the best in the business (Ross, 2015). There are some areas in which Samsung as an organisation need to work on and are as below.

• Samsung should have tie up with expertise towards foreign supply.
• Samsung should rely on multiple suppliers in order to increase the market share.
• Samsung as an organisation should build goodwill in terms of supply chain management.
• The risk needs to be reduced in supply chain management.
• The overall growth of the organisation needs to be improved by making few alterations in the overall working methodology of supply chain management(Ross, 2015).
• Bibliography

Harald Dyckhoff. (2015). Supply Chain Management and Reverse Logistics (Second Edition ed.). Springer Science & Business Media.

Kulkarni, S. (2015). Supply Chain Management: Creating Linkages for Faster Business Turnaround (Third Edition ed.). Tata McGraw-Hill Education,.

Lambert, D. M. (2014). Supply Chain Management: Processes, Partnerships, Performance (Second Edition ed.). Supply Chain Management Inst.

Ross, D. F. (2015). Introduction to Supply Chain Management Technologies (Second Edition ed.). CRC Press.

Sokolov, B. (2014). Adaptive Supply Chain Management (Fourth Edition ed.). Springer Science & Business Media.