Value Cycle Management: A Non-Linear Approach To Supply Chain Management
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Over the past several years, companies everywhere have attempted to realize greater efficiency and improved quality by integrating business processes across the extended enterprise. Many began looking to combine technology, data and resources in a manner that would yield increased profits, better customer retention, and enhanced productivity. In theory, a closed-loop approach such as this would deliver unprecedented visibility into end-to-end supply chain processes and lead to better, more informed business decisions.
In practice, however, this sort of process optimization was not so easy to achieve. While its benefits appealed greatly to nearly every mid-to large-sized organization, particularly those in high-growth, competitive markets, time would show that the ability to execute this vision would be challenged by a single prevailing thought: that production follows a linear path in the form of a "supply chain." The supply chain, a staple of every capitalist economy, holds that the manufacturer of goods and services is part of a linear process—a chain with a beginning and an end.
Arising from efforts to integrate technology and synchronize processes across the entire supply chain, companies are increasingly migrating away from the notion of a linear supply chain. Instead, they are beginning to adopt a more dynamic, non-linear approach, embracing the idea of a value "cycle." This approach to creating effective, closed-loop business processes is known as Value Cycle Management.
Value Cycle Management (VCM) is the optimization of supply chain functions across all levels of suppliers, partners and customers through the integration, collaboration and synchronization of technology, data and people-centric processes. By creating multiple touch points across the supply chain, companies can employ VCM to make business processes smoother, more productive and more profitable.
This paper discusses the evolution, growth and importance of the supply chain as well as Exact Software's answer to Supply Chain Management.