Supply Chain Management for the Little Guy

The following post is made possible by support from UPS.

A reader wrote:

What is supply chain management?

Ok, that seems like a really strange question to ask me but I’m game. Let me Wikipedia that for you:

Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the provision of product and service packages required by the end customers in a supply chain. Supply chain management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption.

Although the above definition undoubtedly contains the answer to your question, what if it’s all gibberish to you? What if you don’t speak “big business”? What if, heaven forbid, you don’t have a college degree in some exotic business-management-science because it was never your dream to be a middle manager and you dropped out like Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates, Dell, Ellison, Branson and Disney?!

In that case, what you need is a really short video that quickly explains supply chain management in plain english and in a non-boring way.

Today is absolutely your lucky day.

Someone in the W.P. Carey School of Business‘s Supply Chain Management Department at Arizona State University thought it would be fun to put together a series of twelve short videos providing a complete introduction to supply chain management. The videos are short, informative and with just the right mixture of humor and education to keep you watching. Best of all, did I mention that they are short: the first one is only eight minutes long, nearly twice as long as each of the rest, so the videos are very easy to digest.

Do me a favor, watch the first one. It describes the complex supply chain of a simple product, a bottle of water. If you’re not hooked, I’ll give you your money back. 🙂

Video 1: What is Supply Chain Management?