Supply Chains: A Manager's Guide

Distribution and Procurement

Although the basic elements of supply chains can be combined in an infinite variety of ways, there are two basic patterns that account for most of the structure. To see these patterns, consider how a supply chain looks from the perspective of a single plant. Every facility downstream of that plant is a destination for its finished goods and forms part of the plant's distribution network. Every facility upstream is a source of supplies, and forms part of its procurement network. These two networks of the supply chain are radically different from the plant's perspective.

Some plants ship only to a single destination, but this is rare. The normal pattern is for each plant to serve as many destinations as necessary to ...