Abstract

This paper describes the basic philosophy to supply chain management in order to develop and implement comprehensive supply chain strategies for Sony Corporation in global operation. Sony is committed to fulfilling its responsibility to society as a corporate citizen, including managing its supply chain in a responsible manner. To achieve this goal, Sony is working with its business partners, suppliers and subcontractors to help ensure that they adhere to the same high standards as Sony in the areas of human rights, labor conditions, health and safety, and environmental protection. After an overview of supply chain management, strategy and issues, a supply chain design decomposition is presented. It separates objectives and …show more content…

Supply chain success should be measured in terms of supply chain profitability and not in terms of the profits at an individual stage.
Having defined the success of a supply chain in terms of supply chain profitability, the next logical step is to look for sources of revenue and cost. For any supply chain, there is only one source of revenue: the customer. At Wal-Mart, a customer purchasing detergent is the only one providing positive cash flow for the supply chain. All other cash flows are simply fund exchanges that occur within the supply chain given that different stages have different owners. When Wal-Mart pays its supplier, it is taking a portion of the funds the customer provides and passing that money on to the supplier. All flows of information, product, or funds generate costs within the supply chain. Thus, the appropriate management of these flows is a key to supply chain success. Supply chain management involves the management of flows between and among stage sin a supply chain to maximize total supply chain profitability.

IMPORTANCE OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Organizations increasingly find that they must rely on effective supply chains, or networks, to compete in the global market and networked economy. During the past decades, globalization, outsourcing and information technology have enabled many organizations, such as Dell and Hewlett Packard, to successfully operate solid collaborative supply networks in which each