Materials Management
The most important activity of all industrial and trading
companies is the acquisition, storage, movement and processing
of materials before they are delivered to customers for
consumption. Since the assets of all the industrial and
trading companies is normally invested in material flows,
the efficiency of material management determines the fortune
of such companies. This makes effective management of material
flow process one of the key business processes operating
in an organisation.
The Supply Chain Management (SCM) concept has been developed
to face the new competitive pressures and performance demands
imposed on the modern organisation. SCM is more theoretical
with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which can be understood
mainly by the management consultants. This has strictly
restricted the concept’s understanding and applicability
among managers, who cope with the complexity of materials
flow and management on day-to-day basis.
Theoretically, consistent set of concepts, tools and techniques,
which can be understood and used by the materials managers
and other members of the management, can be presented to
rectify the problem. SCM comprises of coordination, control
and profit initiatives associated with the flow of materials,
information and transactions among the partners. Such transaction
partners include vendors, buyers, their channels, operations
and abilities to integrate with the core enterprise.
The concepts, tools and techniques presented, attempt to
optimise SCM and more specifically present ways to:
