Supply Chain Integration There are myriads of ways in which setting supply chain standards can improve supply chain management. For the most part, setting such standards will help to address issues that this particular industry faces as a whole. Setting standards will take a holistic approach to those problems, and eschew the deployment of end point solutions to issues that are common throughout a host of vertical industries and which are related to supply chain management. Ultimately, such standards will improve the field of supply chain management by creating a greater degree of uniformity and ensuring that there is more cohesiveness in the ways that companies do business, in the ways that the business they do affect one another, and in the relationships between manufacturers and supply chain management entities.

Two of the most palpable areas in which the implementation of supply chain standards can better supply chain management are convenience and expedience. These two factors are intrinsically linked with one another -- convenience facilitates expedience and expedience (when paired with precision) almost always creates convenience. Moreover, these particular boons also correlate with the aspect of uniformity that setting standards will produce. The implementation of standards will ensure that products and parts are designed to a universal set of specifications -- particularly within vertical industries. The effect is that disparate entities can "streamline interaction throughout a supply chain…speed up transactions and…reduce inventories and delays" (Thibodeau,...

If standards are in place, others that are affected by a manufacturer's decision to change the specifications of a certain product will be able to adjust to those specifications a lot more expediently, since they are already abreast of what they will be and how they will in turn affect their contribution to the supply chain.
Another tangible way in which supply chain standards can greatly improve supply chain management is through reducing costs associated with enterprise integration. Cost reduction, of course, is inherently linked towards expedience and convenience, as well as towards the logic that makes these two factors a boon for supply chain management. Standards also help to increase transparency, which involves "sharing, rather than hoarding, information" (Copulsky et al., 2014). In the event that a particular person in the supply chain changes the dimensions for a particular product or part, they will have to do so to standardized specifications that all entities within the supply chain are aware of and may be able vary their own components to accordingly. This process aloe will be responsible for saving costs for those in the supply chain management sphere, since there will be a finite amount of change that manufacturers can make. Without these standards, manufacturers could conceivably create change in their various components that could render those of others in the supply chain inoperative. In such a situation those others will have not only wasted time, resources, and money creating parts that are no longer compatible, but they will also have to start from…