Nowadays, there are still serious misunderstandings about the relationship between logistics and supply chain, whether in logistics industry or manufacturing enterprises. Even in books written by some famous domestic publishing houses, it is not uncommon to equate supply chain management with logistics management. The viewpoint that "logistics is the third-party profit source" pushes this fallacy to the extreme, as if as long as logistics is done well, the operational problems will be solved and huge profits will be successfully brought to enterprises. Based on many manufacturing enterprises' one-sided understanding of logistics and supply chain management, their logistics management departments have attracted much attention. However, the management thinking from the perspective of "saving logistics costs and gaining profits" often makes the managers of logistics departments feel that the expenses are stretched. It is worth noting that under the restriction of cost, the quality of logistics business also shows a downward trend, which has a huge negative impact on the production and sales of finished products and directly leads to the decline of overall operating performance.

Because the supply chain management of enterprises has been involved in upstream and downstream management, covering procurement, production, sales, logistics, information, finance and other related functions, logistics is only one of the supporting parts. Judging from the cost of manufacturing enterprises, the cost of procurement, production and sales still accounts for the bulk, which plays a decisive role in the success or failure of enterprise management. Logistics is only a means to effectively support the effective implementation of the above-mentioned link strategy. In other words, the formulation of logistics strategy must be based on the formulation of relevant link strategies, and its specific performance should be reflected in ensuring the smooth operation of other key functions, not just unilaterally pursuing the minimization of costs.

Of course, from the perspective of manufacturing enterprise management, logistics is still one of the key components. Effective forward-looking strategic planning of the enterprise's own logistics system will enable it to achieve low-cost operation under the premise of meeting operational requirements. For example, according to the frequency and scale of sales orders and the characteristics of distribution resources, it is a popular practice to effectively establish a regional distribution center system. Some large national enterprises also adopt this strategy to improve service level and reduce logistics operation cost.

Logistics is only an indispensable link in the supply chain management of enterprises, and the improvement of the overall performance level of enterprises can not only rely on the improvement of logistics management.

Second, talk about supply chain management.

1, the rise of supply chain management

Since 1990s, with the continuous application of various automation and information technologies in manufacturing enterprises, the manufacturing productivity has been raised to a very high level, and the potential of technical means in the manufacturing process itself to improve the competitiveness of the whole product has begun to decrease. In order to further tap the potential of reducing product costs and meeting customer needs, people began to pay attention to the supply chain and the whole supply chain system in the whole product life cycle from managing the internal production process of enterprises. Many scholars have come to the conclusion that the supply chain cost (such as storage and transportation cost) accounts for an increasing proportion of the total cost in the whole product life cycle. Michael W. Trisiwei, a professor at the Business School of the University of British Columbia in Canada, believes that for enterprises, the inventory cost is about 3% of the sales amount, the transportation cost is about 3% of the sales amount, and the procurement cost accounts for about 40%-60% of the sales revenue. For a country, the supply system accounts for more than 10% of the gross national product, and the labor force involved also accounts for more than 10% of the total. In addition, with the global economic integration and the development of information technology, the cooperation between enterprises is increasingly strengthened, and the trend of cross-regional and even transnational cooperative manufacturing between enterprises is increasingly obvious. More and more manufacturing enterprises in the world are outsourcing a lot of routine business to developing countries, but only retaining core business (such as marketing, key system design and system integration, assembly and sales). For example, the manufacturing of Boeing 747 aircraft requires more than 4 million parts, but most of these parts are not produced by Boeing, but provided by 1500 large enterprises and 15000 small and medium-sized enterprises in 65 countries. In recent years, China's four major aircraft industry companies have undertaken the "subcontracting" production tasks of horizontal tail, vertical tail, door, fuselage, nose and wing box of Boeing 737/300, 737/700, 757, MD82 and MD90-30. After Ford produces parts in Malaysia, it will be sent to Japan to assemble the engine, then the engine will be sent to the assembly plant in the United States to assemble the whole vehicle, and finally the car will be shipped back to Japan for sale. Two-thirds of the parts used by Chrysler in the United States are obtained from outside, and it buys 60,000 different parts from 65,438+065,438+040 different suppliers. Some well-run home appliance enterprises (such as Chunlan Air Conditioning Company) and high-tech enterprises (such as Shenzhen Huawei Company) also outsource many parts production tasks to other manufacturers (such as Chunlan Company, which has nearly 100 parts cooperative factories). In these cooperative production processes, a large amount of materials and information are transmitted, stored and exchanged in a wide range of areas. The cost of these activities constitutes an important part of product cost and plays a very huge role in meeting customer needs. Therefore, it is necessary to plan, reorganize, coordinate, control and optimize the whole supply, storage and sales system of raw materials, spare parts and final products, so as to speed up the flow of materials, reduce inventory, transmit information quickly, always understand and effectively meet customer needs, thus greatly reducing product costs and improving enterprise efficiency. The supply system is also very important for a country. In the Gulf War, the victory of multinational forces in attacking Iraq was not only because of their advanced weapons and equipment, but also because of the efficient and orderly operation of the entire military supply system. In countries where manufacturing plays an important role in the national economy (such as China), it is very important for their economic development to rationally arrange the whole manufacturing parts manufacturers and establish a cooperative system.

Therefore, Supply Chain Management:SCM), as a new academic concept, was first put forward in the west, and many people studied it and enterprises began to practice it. Fortune magazine, a global authoritative magazine, lists supply chain management ability as an important strategic competitive resource for enterprises. In today's global economic integration, it is very important for enterprises to consider the whole production and operation activities from the perspective of supply chain management and form their core competitiveness in this respect.

2. Basic concepts of supply chain and supply chain management.

The process from the procurement, transportation, processing and manufacturing of raw materials and parts to the final delivery to customers is regarded as an interlocking chain, which is the supply chain. The concept of supply chain is developed from the concept of extended production, which extends and delays the production activities of enterprises. For example, Toyota's lean cooperation model in Japan regards the activities of suppliers as an organic part of production activities and controls and coordinates them. This is a forward extension. Delay refers to the extension of production activities to the sales and service stages of products. Therefore, supply chain is the interface between customers and suppliers through planning, acquisition, storage, distribution, service and other activities, so that enterprises can meet the needs of internal and external customers. The concept of sales channel in supply chain and marketing is both related and different. Supply chain includes all companies and enterprises involved in supply, production, distribution and sales before products reach customers, so its definition covers the concept of sales channels. The supply chain attaches equal importance to upstream suppliers (supply activities), intermediate producers (manufacturing activities), transporters (storage and transportation activities) and downstream consumers (distribution activities).

Therefore, supply chain management refers to all kinds of activities and processes of planning, coordinating, operating, controlling and optimizing the whole supply chain system, and its goal is to deliver the right products that customers need to the right place at the right time, in the right quantity, in the right quality and in the right state.

3. Several methods of supply chain management

1) Re-plan the supply process of the enterprise in time to fully meet the needs of customers. Delayed manufacturing is an important form of customization in supply chain management. Its core idea is to change the traditional manufacturing process and delay the parts that best reflect the customer's individuality. For example, Benetton Clothing Company in the United States is a typical example of applying this method. The company delayed some production links until it was closest to the customer's demand. For example, sweaters, the fastest change in customer demand is mainly the color of clothes, while the size change is relatively small. Therefore, when Benetton Garment Company produces plush sweaters, it first makes them into white sweaters of a certain production scale (without dyeing), and then dyes them before putting them on the market (instead of dyeing them first and then knitting them as in the traditional way), so as to ensure that the color of the clothes conforms to the latest trend at that time and meet the needs of customers. Take the production of round neck shirts as an example. Under the mass production mode, the production of round neck shirts is to use the same color and mass produce clothes of different sizes. As a result, the T-shirts people wear in the street are the same and have no freshness. In fact, people's requirements for T-shirts are only large, medium and small, and the patterns and words printed on them truly reflect people's different interests and hobbies. The new cheap instant printing technology satisfies people's hobbies for different patterns. The new production mode is that the garment factory only produces different types of unprinted T-shirts. In the sales process, according to the different requirements of customers, customers can print their favorite patterns and words on T-shirts, and even print my photos. In this way, customers get a very satisfied T-shirt. In short, in the design of the whole supply system, the whole manufacturing and supply process should be reconstructed to make the product differences as close as possible to the final customers, so as to fully meet the needs of customers. This practice of reconstructing the traditional manufacturing process is actually consistent with the current popular business process reengineering (BPR).

2) Re-plan the geographical distribution of suppliers and manufacturers to fully meet the needs of customers and reduce operating costs. What we should consider here is the reasonable layout of suppliers and sellers, because it plays an important role in meeting customers' needs quickly and accurately, strengthening communication and cooperation between enterprises and suppliers and sellers, and reducing transportation and storage costs. For example, a traditional American company produces printers, which produce the host part in the United States. Considering the different types of power supplies and plugs in different countries, it produces plug parts in other countries, then transports the plugs back to the United States, assembles and stores them in the United States, and finally transports them to other countries. Obviously, this kind of operation has some waste in storage and transportation. Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the United States does things differently. For example, when it produced printers for China, it put the production of printer plugs in Shenzhen. When goods are needed in a certain place in China, the printer and plug are transported from the United States and Shenzhen to the destination respectively, and assembled in the retail store there, so that the printer and plug are assembled at the nearest place to the customer. At this time, the storage and transportation of products is different from the traditional simple storage and transportation, and the storage and transportation here is value-added A machine tool factory in China also meets customers' demands and reduces costs through reasonable design of supply system. For example, the factory has many users in Jiangsu. In order to reduce the cost and shorten the delivery time, it has set up some supporting factories in Jiangsu, mainly producing various fixtures for it. When the main part of the lathe bed in this factory is completed, it will be sent to the supporting factory in Jiangsu, where it will be assembled and tested with fixtures. Because it is close to the users in Jiangsu, it can be easily modified and adjusted, and finally the assembled machine tools and fixtures are transported to the users in Jiangsu.

It is necessary to consider the reasonable layout of the supply system, including the distance between the assembly plant and the target market, and the distance between the assembly plant and its parts factory. The assembly plant is close to the target market, which can quickly understand the changes of the market and the needs of customers, and can greatly reduce the transportation and storage costs. The distance between the assembly plant and the parts suppliers is close, which enables the parts suppliers to quickly understand the changes in the production process and demand of the assembly plant, facilitates information communication and cooperation between them, and reduces the storage and transportation costs. Therefore, when enterprises plan to develop new markets in other places, they usually set up new assembly plants near new markets, and require long-term cooperative parts suppliers to invest in cooperative supporting plants nearby or cooperate with suitable local manufacturers. For example, in order to develop the China market, German Volkswagen invested in Shanghai and established Shanghai Volkswagen Automobile Co., Ltd. as a joint venture. About 70% of Shanghai Volkswagen's domestic parts and components are provided by Shanghai enterprises (including Shanghai Volkswagen) and 30% by foreign enterprises. While 44% of the parts enterprises designated by Dongfeng Motor Company for Shenlong cars are in Hubei, and 38% are in East China with Shanghai as the center.

We can also make the following comparison. The average distance between the assembly plant of Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan and the component manufacturers is 95.3km, that of Nissan Motor Corporation is 183.3km, that of Chrysler Corporation is 875.3km, that of Ford Corporation is 8 18.8km, and that of General Motors Corporation is 687.2km ... From the average distance between the assembly plants of major automobile companies and the component factories, it can be seen that reasonable layout plays a very important role. The advantage of short average distance of Toyota Motor Corporation has been completely transformed into management advantage. The company's spare parts manufacturers deliver spare parts to the assembly plant eight times a day, with an average of 42 times a week. Nissan Motor Company delivers spare parts 2 1 time per week on average, which is only half that of Toyota. The shipping frequency of parts factory of American General Motors Company is only 1.5 times a day, with an average of 7.5 times a week. Obviously, the average inventory cost of Japanese auto companies is lower than that of American auto companies. Because Toyota and Nissan's parts cooperative enterprises are close to the company's assembly plant, it brings convenience to the communication between managers and engineers of each enterprise. The annual average number of face-to-face communication between Toyota assembly plant and parts factory is 7236, compared with 33 44 for Nissan, 1 107 for GM and 757 for Chrysler. Every year, about 350 engineers from parts factories communicate in the technical center of Toyota Motor Corporation headquarters, with an average of 6.8 for each part factory, 0.9 for Nissan/KLOC-0 and 0.7 for GM. This frequent exchange of personnel between Toyota Company creates conditions for full communication and cooperation between the assembly plant and the parts plant, which is convenient for both parties to solve the problems encountered in the development, technical transformation and production of new models, thus speeding up the development of new products, improving product quality and reducing operating costs.

3) Integrate and coordinate the manufacturing resources of all suppliers in production to make them operate as a whole. Enterprises often have many suppliers. In order to meet the specific user goals, it is necessary to integrate and coordinate the production resources of all these suppliers so that they can operate as a whole. This is an important method in supply chain management. Li & Fung in Hong Kong; Fung) company is a model in this respect.

Mo Lifeng Company is a famous innovator in the field of global supply chain management. Located in Hong Kong, it produces all kinds of clothing for 350 dealers in about 26 countries (mainly the United States and Europe). But when it comes to "manufacturing", it has no workshops and production workers. However, in many countries and regions (mainly China, Taiwan Province, South Korea, Malaysia, etc. ), with 7500 production enterprises (such as raw material production and transportation, wool production, weaving and dyeing, sewing, etc. ) we need to produce clothes and keep very close contact with them. One of the most important core competitiveness of this company is the technology of integrating and coordinating the manufacturing resources of all its suppliers in the long-term operation process. It manages and controls all manufacturers as skillfully as it manages its own internal departments. The following is an example of the company accepting orders from European retailers10,000 pieces of clothing to illustrate its order management process. For this customer, the company may buy yarns from Korean manufacturers and spin and dye them in Taiwan Province province. Since Japan has the best zippers and buttons, but most of them are made in China, the company found YKK (the largest zipper manufacturer in Japan) and ordered an appropriate number of zippers from the factory in China. Considering the production quota and labor resources, Mo Lifeng chose Thailand as the best processing location. At the same time, in order to meet the delivery requirements, the company processed all the clothes in five factories in Thailand. Five weeks later, 65,438+00,000 pieces of clothing all arrived in Europe, as if they were produced in a factory. In this process, Li & Fung even helped European customers correctly analyze the needs of market consumers and put forward suggestions on clothing design, so as to meet the needs of subscribers to the maximum extent. Nowadays, people are becoming more and more fashionable in their clothes. It seems that there are six or seven seasons in a year, and the style or color of clothes changes quickly. Therefore, the orderer usually orders 10 weeks in advance from his own interests, but many aspects such as color or style can not be decided yet. Often the orderer can only tell the company the color of the clothes five weeks before the delivery date, and the style of the clothes can only be known three weeks before. Faced with these high requirements, Mo Lifeng Company can rely on its mutual trust with the supplier network and superb integration and coordination technology to reserve undyed yarns from yarn manufacturers and the production capacity of weaving and dyeing from relevant manufacturers. Five weeks before delivery, Feng Li quickly informed the weaving and dyeing factory after learning the required color from the orderer, and then informed the last garment sewing factory: "I don't know the specific style of the garment yet, but I have arranged the preliminary processes such as dyeing, weaving and cutting for you. You still have three weeks to make so many garments." The final result is of course satisfactory. Generally speaking, if the last sewing factory organizes the previous process by itself, the delivery time may be three months instead of five weeks. Obviously, the shortening of delivery time and the ability of clothes to keep up with the latest fashion trends depend on Li & Fung's unified and coordinated control of all its manufacturers in order to act like a company. In short, its market and production information, supplier network and coordinated management technology for the whole supplier are its most important core competitiveness. This ability enables it to think and make profits like a big company and be as flexible as a small company.

4. Concluding remarks

As can be seen from the above examples, supply chain management is becoming a new competitive strategy for enterprises in today's global economic integration, increasing interdependence among enterprises and increasingly personalized user needs. In some western countries, supply chain management is even listed as a professional course of MBA education. However, considering the operation and management of enterprises from the perspective of supply chain is still in its infancy in China, and there is still a lack of research and application. China enterprises and academic circles should attach great importance to it, and carry out the research and practice of supply chain management with China characteristics according to the national conditions and factory conditions of China.

China manufacturing enterprises should change their management concepts and pay more attention to supply chain management. First of all, supply chain management should be incorporated into the overall business strategy of enterprises. That is to say, when making business strategy, we should consider, design and plan the whole supply chain system in the whole product life cycle according to the needs of customers and the internal business performance of enterprises. Second, in the daily production and operation activities, we should constantly adjust, reorganize and optimize the management of the supply chain system in time and space to better meet the changing needs of customers. This is a process of continuous improvement, optimization and summing up experience. Third, enterprises should adjust their organizational structure accordingly. China's manufacturing enterprises were established according to the model of the former Soviet Union in the planned economy era. Their organizational structure is characterized by "big and complete, small and complete" and production-oriented. Generally, their organizational structure has the "olive-shaped" characteristics of "small at both ends (development and sales) and large in the middle (production)". This kind of organizational structure is huge and bloated, which is not conducive to flexible response to external markets. Enterprises should focus on their core business as much as possible and eliminate general businesses that cannot form competitive advantages. Some qualified enterprises can develop into a "dumbbell-shaped" organizational structure of "two big (development and sales) and small (production) in the middle" and establish a good supplier system for themselves. At this time, enterprises should explore the technology of unified control and coordination for their many suppliers and the whole supply chain system.