Production planning and steel industry

Abstract

Various definitions for the concept of a supply chain and the corresponding SCM exist. Common themes in all of these definitions are that a supply chain usually spans companies or organizational units of a single company (i.e., from the raw material supplier to the manufacturer to retailers) and the overarching aim of each supply chain is customer satisfaction (Chandra and Grabis 2007: 20, Govil and Proth 2002: 7, Christopher 2005: 5, Chopra and Meindl 2007: 3). Stadtler (2005, P.576) defined SCM as “the task of integrating organizational units along a supply chain and coordinating materials, information, and financial flows in order to fulfill customer demands with the aim of improving competitiveness of the supply chain as a whole.