WEEK 14

This week will be the very last week for my semester 6. Today, for FSM4401, we learnt supply chain management (SCM). From that, I get to know that the elements in supply chain can be categorized into upstream and downstream. Orders, information, payments and returns are of upstream while products, services and information are grouped under downstream.

Vertical integration is introduced by Dr in class. It has few definition but here, in terms of management and business, it is said as by combining all the suppliers, work can be done effectively. On the other word, it is said to be strategy applied to control all the suppliers, thereby targeted outcome can be achieved easier.

Then, we were told that there are total 3 flows in supply chain, known as material flows, information flows and financial flows. These are of the key components as supply chain will not be able to work or function without any of the flow.

Our class is continued with the importance of building up a well-structured organization. Building up an organized organization is essential (or we say MUST) before working on supply chain management. For instances, if the organization is not well-organized (not digitalized and without documentation), it's hard to tackle especially when problems arise. Tracing back of product will be so hard to be implemented.

Push and Pull Model is introduced in class too. This is crucial as supply chain is always a combination of both push and pull. Under a push-based supply chain, products are pushed through the channel, starting from production to retailer. However, there are problems along the supply chain. Situation with uncertainties will be created (health conscious, eating healthy in food industry etc) under certain circumstances. Those are the things that are out of our control. And that results in Bullwhip Effect. Overstocking, bottlenecks or delays are known as the situations occurred under this effect. Nevertheless, Bullwhip Effect is used to predict the fluctuations with the moving effect (opposite aspect) also. Take for example, what to do if inventories doesn't meet the selling demand or vice versa. While in a pull-based supply chain, things are implemented on demand-driven rather than to forecast.

Before our final class ended, an assignment was given and we were told to submit it in 15 minutes time. Even that sounds like a mission impossible (at least we thought so), most of us are able to get it done on time.

So with this, it ends our FSM4401 class. It's truly an honor as we gained so much through this course. All the stuffs that I learnt in this course I will definitely apply in my future career later.