ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses position logistics as one of the functional areas of business administration. The supply chain is of prime strategic importance to just about every global enterprise. The chapter describes difference between business administration and supply chain management (SCM). SCM goes a step further and looks at the integration of the flows of information, goods, and money between and within several organizations in a production and marketing chain. SCM is the tuning of the logistics activities to each other between and within separate logistics links so that the logistics processes can all be controlled as an integrated whole. The chapter illustrates a total of four forms of SCM in logistics: physical integration, information integration, control integration and structure integration. It provides a narrow and a broad view of SCM and explains concept of the reverse supply chain. Advance planning systems are supplied by suppliers with exotic names like i2/Rhythm, Logility, Numetrix, Manugistics, Peoplesoft and SAP-advanced planner and optimizer.
