What is Supply Chain Management?
It is the management of the flow of goods and services and includes all processes that transform raw materials into final products.
A supply chain starts with the delivery of raw materials from a supplier to a manufacturer and ends with the delivery of the finished product or service to the end consumer.
By managing the supply chain, companies are able to cut excess costs and deliver products to the consumer faster. This is done by keeping tighter control of internal inventories, internal production, distribution, sales, and the inventories of company vendors.
The supply chain manager tries to minimize shortages and keep costs down.
What is it to do with Food Processing?
Raw materials like grains, raw meat, fish, etc are collected by different sources.
These sources may do preliminary processing of these to make components of a food product before passing over them to the main manufacturer through many middlemen.
The manufacturer does the final processing of these components to make the food product. This completes only the first stage of supply management.
Now the finished product has to be delivered to the consumer. Here also there will be a number of middlemen and stages. The manufacturer normally hands over the food product to a wholesale dealer. The wholesaler passes the product to a retailer from where the consumer buys the processed food item for his personal use.
Thus, Supply Chain Management is the management of the upstream and downstream value-added flow of materials from suppliers→ company→ retailer→ final consumers.
If there are good Supply Chain Management practices in a country, then it will boost the economy as a whole.
Good supply chain links help farmers, manufactures, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. Everyone in the supply chain link will get inputs at a faster rate, at the right time, and at a cheaper cost.
