Handbook

In this course, you will examine the basic concepts and tools of supply chain management within the broader framework of an organisation's overall competitive strategy.
The supply chain, which comprises all aspects of the sourcing of inputs from upstream suppliers, the internal value-adding processes and the distribution of outputs to downstream customers, is central to the overall success of any organisation. Any organisation that does not align its overall corporate strategy and its supply chain strategy will struggle to successfully deliver products and services to the market in a form that customers value.

While it is not necessary for participants to be highly skilled in mathematics to undertake this course, you are expected to be familiar with, or be prepared to acquire, basic knowledge about the following concepts:

• basic probability and statistics
• probability distributions and standard deviations (particularly the normal distribution)
• means and weighted averages
• basic algebra.

You will be expected to be able to perform some basic algebraic and statistical calculations in this course.

This course offers a broad examination of the key issues involved in the management of supply chains. It places supply chain management in a strategic context and requires a blend of managerial and technological knowledge and skills.

However, the course begins with a guided analysis of the strategic context of the organisation, so it can be taken early in your degree program, before any other strategy courses have been completed.

This course is well suited to a broad range of students? not only those involved in manufacturing industries? as the concepts, processes and methods are readily adaptable to organisations that provide hard or soft product/service combination industries. One full Unit is devoted to service supply chains. There are numerous other references and opportunities to apply the theory to service supply chains in both the Unit notes and the associated textbook.