Production/ Delivery, and Support Processes

(This study notes based blog is picked from my educational career starting from my institute of supply chain management I picked these definitions from my books of supply chain management courses, diploma in supply chain management and supply chain management degree program I hope it will help all the students and officers in the field of supply chain management)

The integration of quality and supply chain management improvements during the production, delivery and support processes. The production process is responsible for manufacturing the product from inputs through processes to outputs, while delivery processes are responsible for delivery of the product to the customer. Support process, although they do not add direct value to the product, provide an infrastructure for the core processes. Useful quality management tools in production, delivery and support processes include (but are not limited to) process

Improvement techniques, Six Sigma quality, performance measurement, Kaizen, benchmarking, value stream mapping, value analysis, and re-engineering.

Image Courtesy: AIMS Institute of supply chain management 

A quality management survey used in northern Italian businesses uncovered several problems including information communication issues, excessive repetition of technical activities and production configuration errors, that negatively impacted upon the company and the supply chain members (Salvador & Forza, 2004). As results, the order acquisition and fulfillment processes were changed. Recently, Target Corporation used supply management teams to develop a world-class supply base, reduce costs, improve cycle times and accelerate time to market (Murphy, 2010). The team utilized various quality tools to evaluate value creation in the supply chain activities.

A Six Sigma Quality Program offered by several institute of supply chain management, credited to Motorola, indicates that a process is in control to within tolerance limits of +/- 6 standard deviations from the center line in control charting, which given natural process variation relates to 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Six Sigma programs have been effectively utilized in services, manufacturing, education and government. For example, Star wood Hotels utilized a Guest Satisfaction Index survey under its Six Sigma program to improve quality, reduce costs, increase speed and customer responsiveness, and efficiency (Monczka et al., 2009). Similarly a printed circuit board company's six sigma project to identify the root causes, key points and critical outputs resulted in changes to the production processes (supply chain management courses 2009).

Value analysis and value engineering are useful methods to improve the product, processes or both during new product development to ensure that the product or service fulfills its intended function at the lowest total cost. Value analysis and value engineering was successfully used in several industries, including the U.S. Department of Defense. At the U.S. Department of Defense, life cycle costs are reduced through value engineering processes focused on low-cost systems for equipment, procedures, and supplies that are safe, reliable, and maintainable (Benstin et al., 2011). Value analysis (core topic in diploma in supply chain management) and value engineering were successful used in the chemical, plastic, electronic, transportation and packaging industries to improve production performance, product quality, safety, and customer service while reducing transaction costs and inventory costs.

Bench marking, whether informal or formal, is an effective method to improve quality, decrease costs, decrease lead time, improve dependability, and reduce shortages. Bench marked firms improved their supply chains significantly on various measures over firms that chose not to benchmark (Heizer & Render, 2006). Twenty-five years after the growth of bench marking, a recent multinational survey of bench marking practices indicates that bench marking is still an effective improvement tool (Adebanjo et al., 2010). A bench marking study of supply chain processes from different industries that used dependency analysis and data envelopment analysis favored efficient supply chains as higher financial performers (supply chain management degree experts).