Supply Chain Management Principles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Supply Chain Management Principles - Essay Example The process of conducting supply chain activities on a digital interface largely conducted by Apple Company reflects no physical activities pertaining to the procurement, stocking, transportation and other such conducts which are increasingly observed in regards to conservative warehousing practices. Apple through the help of online digital supply chain activities is found to conduct a billion transactions pertaining to media files in an annual period. The supply chain activities conducted over the digital sphere like the traditional warehousing activities also require the existences of products produced to be marketed to the final consumers. However unlike the traditional warehousing functions the supply chain management functions performed on a digital platform require only two parties i.e. the one providing or producing the content and the other the final consumer to whom the digital products would be transported. In turn the supply chain activities conducted by the company on the online sphere by Apple Incorporation is viewed as that which has helped in transforming the traditional supply chain concepts originally practiced by the company’s manufacturing and selling physical products. In evaluating the effectiveness of the supply chain activities conducted on a digital sphere it is found that Apple Corporation has a significant number of stock or inventory turnovers in comparison to other firms (Blanchard, 2010,p.71-72). The make-buy decision The make or buy decision is considered as a strategic decision in regards to supply chain management activities of companies. It is because the activities conducted in the realm of supply chain management activities contain large amount of outsourcing functions both in terms of procuring the materials from the supplier’s end rather than making such. Again the company can take help of distributors to help them distribute the products produced to the ultimate buyers. Thus in the former function it is found that materials are procured rather than producing such in the production units of the companies while the latter activity focus on gaining the supply chain support to sell the products produced by the firm. In the act of procurement of products from suppliers the firm focuses on enhancing the parameters of core competence. Similarly because of the lack of proper infrastructure the distributors support is gained to distribute the products to the consumers in an enhanced manner (Wisner, Tan and Leong, 2008, p.52-53; Chitale and Gupta, 2007, p.9). The firms also tend to produce their products for it helps to reduce the risks associated with procuring the products from the external environment and also saves time and money expended by the firm in the search for the right suppliers. Buying in addition to increasing the risks also makes the firm spend huge money and time while the function of making requires the firm to assimilate all its resources to produce the products and thus reducin g the level of core competencies (Berk, 2010, p.90-91). The making or buying decision process also requires the evaluation of the different risks associated with such. In regards to making the product specific risks arises relating to the