ABSTRACT
Supply chain management as a discipline has evolved since late 1980s and during the post-liberalisation and globalisation era, the importance of supply chain management was increasingly recognised as an area requiring the highest priority to be cost-effective for meeting the challenges of competition. Since then, the importance of various components of supply chain management including areas like procurement and production started gaining increased attention. Businesses realised that 75% of the cost of the product is constituted by procured or bought-out items, and if a company has to be cost competitive, a greater opportunity lies in managing the procurement function better and as such because of the focused initiatives, procurement function improved during subsequent years adding lot of incremental value to the business. After making significant improvements in procurement functions, businesses start focusing on other core activities of the supply chain management function. Post-liberalisation and globalisation era, we observed the shifting of manufacturing locations of large global corporations from high-cost countries to low-cost countries. And China had emerged as the preferred manufacturing hub for global players.
