Supply chain management of cellular phone industry

Abstract

A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers. Supply chains exist in both service and manufacturing organizations, although the complexity of the chain may vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm. Supply chain management is typically viewed to lie between fully vertically integrated firms, where the entire material flow is owned by a single firm and those where each channel member operates independently. Therefore coordination between the various players in the chain is key in its effective management. Such a team is more competitive when each player knows how to be positioned for the hand-off. The relationships are the strongest between players who directly pass the baton, but the entire team needs to make a coordinated effort to win the race. After analyzing the factors considered in research it is observed that following factors are significant as compared to all other factors. 1) Variability in Demand 2) Consumption rate 3) Life Cycle stage 4) Product Variety 5) Criticality of item 6) Quality ( No. of Rejections ) 7) Manufacturing Lead time 8) Number of clients 9) Source of Supply 10 ) Communication System 11) Transportation cost Details analyzed shows that following parameters play an important role in SCM decisions for Vendor in Cellular Industry 1) Price 2) Payment 3) Responsiveness 4) Innovation 5) Transparency 6) Inspection 7) Specifications Detail analysis shows that SCM is there in the Organization still this is not been adequately used to 100% to match all the requirement From the details it is analyzed that there is hardly any respondents who are Highly Satisfied .In Airtel it is observed that most of the respondents are Neutral .Most respondents that is 54.55 % stand Neutral. In case of Hutch 44.68% respondents stand Neutral. Similarly In Hutch only 48.94 % respondents are Moderately Satisfied and in Airtel only 41 .56 %. Area of concern is that still lot of concentration is required in SCM in Cellular industry to make to efficient and effective. Though customers plays very important role in cellular industry, but they are not directly linked with SCM of the Organization. Results of frequency distribution and Ch1-Square do not show any value significant in this case. (Refer Interpretation from Chapter 5 and Appendix 3 ) shows that though customers have given very important response on individual organization but are not directly associated with SCM of that Organization. Detail Analysis by using Paired Correlation was also done on the same set of Questionnaire and results were extracted in form of Correlation table (Refer Annexure 3) to understand the relations. But it is clear from Paired correlation that none of the case is Significant and customer is basically an end user of all services where he is not directly linked with SCM of the Organization. To sustain the benefits of SCM in dynamic & uncertain business environment, the need for continuous evaluation of SCM is called for. Though SCM can be evaluated on a number of parameters, the most important parameter which defines its use from business point of view is effectiveness. The existing literature on SCM is having very limited inputs and addressed partial view only for cellular industry.