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Supply chain management (SCM) deals with the planning and execution issues involved in managing a supply chain.

The components of SCM are:

• Demand planning: (forecasting)

• Demand collaboration: (collaborative resolution process to determine consensus forecasts)

• Order promising: (When can one promise a product to a customer taking account lead times and constraints)

• Strategic network optimization: (what plants and DC's should serve what markets for what products) (monthly - yearly)

• Production and distribution planning: (Coordinate the actual production and distribution plans for a whole enterprise) (daily)

• Production scheduling: (For a single location create a feasible production schedule) (minute by minute)

• Transportation planning: (For multiple supply, manufacturer, distributor and warehousing points in a network)

• Tracking and Measuring: (An ever increasing aspect of supply chain management designed to highlight potential against the plan and possible process improvements)

• Plan of reduction of costs and management of the performance (diagnosis of the potential and the indicators, the organization and planifiaction strategic, masters dysfunctions in real time, evaluation and accounting reporting, evaluation and reporting quality

Supply chain management methodology often encourages modeling real-world processes for analysis and optimization. One notable methodology is SCOR, promoted by the Supply Chain Council.Another useful source of papers and articles is The Supply Chain Doctor resource center [1]