Supply chain management should be understood as a system that entails organization of human labor, individuals, practices, knowledge, and resources that are necessary in ensuring that goods and services are moved from one place to the other, particularly from the manufacturer to consumers at the right time. Globalization presents several challenges to supply chain management, as goods might re-enter the chain of supply at any given stage.
Based on this, it is factual that globalization is the major challenge to any supply chain system, which aims at carrying out its functions internationally. In this regard, the organization should engage in some practices that will give it an advantage as far as supply chain management is concerned. For instance, the idea of total delivered cost management should be employed in ensuring that the process of supply chain management is efficient at the global level.
This means that the organization should have the capability of analyzing the system and predicting the possible costs of distributing goods and services to consumers (Hines, 2004). The supply chain department is required to calculate the costs incurred in delivering the product both domestically and internationally. The costs include custom duties paid to various authorities, the tariffs, and the preferential trade agreements costs.
Review of global logistics process is one of the ways of expanding domestic logistics and supply chain functions to meet the demands of the globalized operations. Studies show that many organizations are yet to embrace automation technologies in conducting their activities as regards to supply chain management.
The use of manual systems might not function well at the global level, as it leads to expenditure of too much time in paper work, which might cause delays hence hindering the development of stronger strategies aimed at driving incessant supply chain development. The issue of automation is a problem to a number of companies since several logistics managers refer to it as the ocean-booking problem.
The issue of end-to-end visibility is of great concern to supply chain managers. Studies show that a company is in a position to operate efficiently through development of a real-time visibility system. Therefore, global operations are greatly affected when the company does not have visibility strategies.
In global supply chain management, formation of partnerships plays a critical role in ensuring that the organization meets its desired objectives and goals. In this regard, all forms of partnerships are vital, including technical, transactional, internal, and strategic partnerships. First, ensuring stronger working relationships within the company is the first thing that would perhaps encourage the development of open communication with other stakeholders.
The manufacturing department and the sales and marketing unit ought to be incorporated into the decision-making processes to facilitate sourcing and procurement. The next partnership should be between the organization and other players in the supply chain sector. This implies that the organization has to collaborate with supplies and important customers who have adequate knowledge pertaining to the supply process.
As already stated, the type of partnerships formed in the supply chain management is mainly tactical and strategic in nature. Based on this, the role of third party logistics providers (3PL) is eminent (Hertz, & Alfredsson, 2003). The organization has to forge a working relationship with providers of important services to customers in foreign markets. Since the supply chain department might not be well conversant with the foreign market, third party companies are able to solve this problem.
References
Hertz, S., & Alfredsson, M. (2003). Strategic development of third party logistics providers. Industrial Marketing Management, 32(2), 139–149.
Hines, T. (2004). Supply chain strategies: Customer driven and customer focused. Oxford: Elsevier.