What steps or actions would an organization take to determine whether the supply management operation has the appropriate internal competencies to achieve competitive advantage?

Wisner, J. D., Tan, K.-C., & Leong, G. K. (2019). Principles of supply chain management: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Cengage.

Hugos, M. H. (2018). Essentials of supply chain management (Links to an external site.) (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read Chapter 1: Introduction to Supply Chain Management in the textbook, and read Chapters 1 and 9 in the book Essentials of Supply Chain Management.

In supply management, one component to explore is how an organization’s supply chain helps to achieve a strategic advantage in the marketplace. What steps or actions would an organization take to determine whether the supply management operation has the appropriate internal competencies to achieve competitive advantage? How do contributions to the supply chain field add to profitability, improved customer service, effectiveness, and overall competitiveness of organizations? Provide at least one specific example.

SAMPLE SOLUTION

Supply chain management is an important component for any organization. When properly managed, supply chain management can help reduce the company’s operational costs and efficiency in service delivery through proper inventory management. It is also important for organizations to evaluate how the supply chain management helps in achieving strategic advantage in the industry.
There are notable steps that an organization has to adopt to assess the appropriateness of internal competencies. The first step is to continually evaluate the organization’s capacity plan. Capacity planning entails evaluating the required resources such as transportation network, suppliers, the sales inventory and the operational plan. Evaluating the effectiveness of these aspects is then followed by demand management which involves predicting demand and sales volume assessment (Wisner et al., 2019). This process ensures that there is proper inventory…