Supply Stands

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, 2002).

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 the beginning in dedicating more time, money and resources to create new components that are compatible.

It is for this reason that supply chain standards would be responsible for the fact that "the auto industry alone could see $1 billion in supply chain savings annually with improved enterprise integration" (Thibodeau, 2002). These types of savings can easily extend themselves to other vertical industries as well, primarily due to the increased degree of integration that having supply chain standards can engender.

Finally, setting supply chain standards can make the supply chain management process better by enabling a degree of uniformity throughout industries (and possibly throughout supply chain management in general) that is currently lacking. Typically, "supply chain management risk vulnerability and complexity are exacerbated by…rapid and increasingly complex technology emergence and cross-traditional sector boundary" (Northwestern University, 2014). The facilitation of such uniformity is also related to savings in terms of costs, training, and human resources.

Without standards, there is the distinct possibility that manufacturers and those in the supply chain might be employing increasingly disparate systems to help them generate equipment and supplies for one another. Such an occurrence is fairly common regarding Computer Aided Design systems and equipment. When manufacturers change CAD equipment, that can greatly impact the supply chain management process because it can mean that in some instances, those management companies have to switch equipment as well.

Or, if they do not have to switch equipment, they might need to conduct training for personnel to learn how to account for the differences in the CAD systems, which can lead to costs associated with training and perhaps even hiring new personnel. There might even be circumstances in which supply chain management entities will need to hire people to.