Supply Chain Integration Dynamics in Today's Manufacturing Industry: a Conceptual Framework for Performance Improvement

In recent years, numerous approaches have been proposed to improve manufacturing plant operations performance. Among many others, supply chain management has received considerable attentions. Despite its benefits, structuring supply chain network is a complex decision making process. At strategic level companies have to decide where to locate new facilities, how to allocate resources to the various facilities, and how to manage the transportation of products through the chain in order to satisfy customer demands. At planning and operational level, companies must collect data and deal with SC decisions regarding to facility, transportation network, inventory, supplier, cost, customer and market, system wide and policy, and any connections among them. It is also stressed that ?the chain is as strong as the weakest link?. This work is helpful to analyses the existing practices and enable to develop some strategic methodologies to integrate the supply chains for manufacturing industry. The overall objective in the book is improving industrial performance which is the serious issue throughout the world.