Supply chain basics series | What is supply chain?

This is Supply Chain educational series from Supply Chain Way and for more information please visit www.supplychainway.com | www.youtube.com/SupplyChainWay
Article by: Alvis Lazarus, Supply Chain Consultant
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WHAT IS SUPPLY CHAIN?
“In this article I am going to explain you what is supply chain??”
Instead of considering any traditional example, I shall pick a day to day example so as to explain the concept of supply chain.  In this example there is a mother and a son. The son works outside the city and the mother wants him to have only home cooked food, for his well being. So, she sends her son home cooked food right on lunch time.
Let’s see in detail how she does that. First, the mother gets all the vegetables, rice, pulses and all other ingredients that are required to prepare food. She prepares the food, packs it in a lunch box and then gets the food delivered to her son right on lunch time. In this example the process of buying all the ingredients that are required to prepare the food is called sourcing. Conversion of the ingredients to the tasty food is called manufacturing. Getting the cooked food delivered to the son is called distribution.
“Sourcing, Manufacturing and Distribution are the three main functions of the Supply Chain.”
Also, in this example suppliers are those people from whom the mother used to buy the ingredients. The customer is her son who is consuming the food that she is delivering. Hence the basic definition of Supply Chain goes like this:
“Supply Chain is the flow of activities involved in sourcing raw materials or parts from the suppliers, manufacturing the product and then distribute the product to the customer.”
This applies to any industry, product and service as well.