GE4480 Defense Supply Chain Management

This course is designed to provide an introduction to supply chain management (SCM). A supply chain is a network of organizations that supply and transform materials, and distribute final products to customers. Supply chain management is a broadly defined term for the analysis and improvement of flows of material, information, and money through this network of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. SCM also plays a vital role in the military operations. The objective of SCM is to deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time. SCM emphasizes inventory-service level tradeoffs across the chain of players that, together, provide the product to a customer. Logistics has traditionally focused on materials issues within and downstream from the factory while SCM looks at the entire network of players, both up and down stream, and perhaps has more of an emphasis on information flows through the network. Logistics has traditionally been considered a more tactical topic while SCM has risen to prominence in recent years for addressing strategic aspects of product distribution. Ultimately, logistics and SCM activities are concerned with coordinating demand and supply. Common elements in that coordination are the management of materials (inventories), the location of materials (warehouses), and the movement of materials (transportation). As part of the coordination, an analyst must consider product and process designs as well as information flows between various players in the networks. These elements form the basis of this course. The two main objectives of this course are to help students understand: (1) the fundamental concepts and techniques necessary for attaining a world class performance in supply chain management and (2) how these concepts and techniques can be applied to design, plan and operate supply chains supporting military operations.

Prerequisite

GE3042

Lecture Hours

3

Lab Hours

0

Course Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to:

  • Determine inventory policies for independent demand items. This includes prioritizing stock-keeping units and defining policies for single-period and multi-period demands.
  • Identify cost-saving opportunities in a variety of supply chain structures. This includes vendor-managed inventories (VMI), inventory pooling, postponement and cross docking.
  • Find well-performing solutions for sharing capacity. This includes situations with equal or unequal value items.
  • Evaluate supply chain information systems. This includes the Automatic Identification Technologies (AIT) for supply chain efficiency and life-cycle asset tracking.