What Is Supply Chain?

The expression “supply chain” was created during the 1980’s to explain the need to integrate important business processes.

What Is Supply Chain? Indeed, supply chain is about integration between business functions and business processes. It is about giving all the information which is important for any services in the industry and for partners of the company such as suppliers, retailers and so on.

In SC, there is a global and not a local optimisation.

The idea is to optimize the entire SC and not only results of the firm. A good SC involves a strong collaboration between actors of the SC.

Therefore, there is a change of scale concerning competition; it is not a competition between firms but rather a rivalry between types of SC.

Moreover, we have to show clearly the difference between logistics and SC because there is often confusion about these two words.

Logistic is a term which applies for the activity of a company. It involves just the distribution of the product whereas SC includes logistic, suppliers, manufacturers, retailers.

“Supply chain” is a vast concept which has to be well understood in order to manage to have a good overview of potential problems and advantages of this sector.