Supply Chain Management: A Learning Perspective

As a human being, we all consume products and/or services all the time. This morning you got up and ate your breakfast, e.g., eggs, milk, bread, fresh fruits, and the like. After the breakfast, you drove your car to work or school. At your office, you used your computer, perhaps equipped with 27” LCD monitor. During your break, you drank a cup of coffee and played with your iPhone. So on and so forth. You probably take it for granted that you can enjoy all of these products. But if you take a closer look at how each of these products can be made and eventually delivered to you, you will realize that each one of these is no short of miracle. For example, which fruit do you like? Consider fresh strawberries. In order for the strawberries to be on your breakfast table, there must be numerous functions, activities, transactions, and people involved in planting, cultivating, delivering, and consuming strawberries. Moreover, all of these functions, activities, transactions, and people are connected as an integral chain, through which physical products like strawberries themselves and virtual elements such as information and communication flow back and forth constantly. By grouping related functions or activities, we have a supply chain, comprised of four primary functions such as supplier, manufacturer, distributor, and finally consumer. A supply chain is essentially a value chain.

For the society or economy as a whole, the goal is to maximize value, i.e., to create satisfactory value without spending too much. In order to create the maximum value for the strawberry supply chain, every participant in the chain must carry out its function efficiently. In addition, all of the members must coordinate with each other effectively in order to ensure value maximization. We have to face the same issues for almost all the products and services we take for granted in our everyday life, e.g., cars, hamburgers, haircuts, surgeries, movies, banks, restaurants, and you name it!

In this course, we want to understand fundamental principles of value creation for the consumers or the market. We try to answer questions like how the product or service is made, how the value-creating activities or functions are coordinated, who should play what leadership roles in realizing all these, and so on. As our course title hints, we approach all of these issues from a learning perspective, which is dynamic in nature and emphasizes long-term capability building rather than short-term symptomatic problem solving.

Re-opening Introduction
-In this chapter, Professor Bowon Kim briefly introduces students to this course. It is about philosophical and moral foundation of a supply chain management.

Introduction to Value, Value Creation, and Supply Chain Management
-In this chapter, we will learn what a supply chain is, what supply chain management is all about, and why it is important to grasp the fundamentals of supply chain management in creating real value for the customers.

Management Capability
-Effective SCM requires the firm to have strong operations capabilities. One can group various operations capabilities into three representative capabilities: Controllability, flexibility, and integrating capability. In order to be competitive in the market, the firm must retain high levels of these capabilities. In this chapter, we will discuss what the management capabilities are and the relationship among these capabilities.

Learning Perspective
-Learning is an essential part of any creative activity. In this chapter, we will learn what the learning capability is and its dynamics in supply chain management. We will also look into the learning propensity model and how the learning processes influence the performance of a supply chain system.

Quality Management
-Quality is one of the most important factors that determine the utility. That is, the higher the quality, the larger the utility experienced by the customer. But, quality is not a one-dimensional concept. In fact, it is a highly complex, multi-layered one. In this chapter, we will explore this complex concept, 'Quality'. We will learn dimensions of quality, total quality management (TQM), quality dynamics and statistical process control (SPC) in detail.

New Product Innovation
-New product innovation is the key to firm's success. In order to sustain successful business, the firm must design and manage its new product process effectively and efficiently. In this chapter, we will learn new product innovation and new product development process. Especially, we will look into and compare two approaches, traditional approach and cross-functional approach.

Supply Chain Strategy I: Structural and Infrastructural Dimensions
-In order to optimize the supply chain performance, the firm must design its supply chain effectively. In this chapter, we will talk about how to design the effective supply chain and look into the designing factors of supply chain management in detail.

Supply Chain Strategy II: Coordination for Value Creation
-Coordination is the key dimension of infrastructure in supply chain management. In this chapter, we will talk about what supply chain coordination is and why it is important. And we will learn vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and postponement in detail.

Supply Chain Globalization and Sustainability
-Why is the effective SCM important for the firm to gain competitive advantage in the global market? In this chapter, we will consider crucial issues related to the question and deal with global supply chain management and value chain sustainability.

Final Exam
-The final exam is based on the concepts and theories we have learned in this course. It includes 30 multiple choice questions.