MN3420 Supply Chain Management
This course is designed to provide an introduction to supply chain management (SCM). A supply chain is a network of organizations that supply and transform materials, and distribute final products to customers. Supply chain management is a broadly defined term for the analysis and improvement of flows of material, information, and money through this network of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. The objective of SCM is to deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time. SCM emphasizes inventory-service level tradeoffs across the chain of players that, together, provide the product to a customer. Logistics has traditionally focused on materials issues within and downstream from the factory while SCM looks at the entire network of players, both up and down stream, and perhaps has more of an emphasis on information flows through the network. Logistics has traditionally been considered a more tactical topic while SCM has risen to prominence in recent years, attracting high-level attention. Ultimately, logistics and SCM activities are concerned with coordinating demand and supply. Common elements in that coordination are the management of materials (inventories), the location of materials (warehouses), and the movement of materials (transportation). As part of the coordination, an analyst must consider product and process designs as well as information flows between various players in the networks. These elements will form the basis of this course. This course is the Distributed Learning version of MN4480.
Lecture Hours
3
Lab Hours
0