The company is a Government agency responsible for regulating the Oil and Gas industry. Our actual supply chain is very variable. As we are a service oriented agency, we are not involved in a continuous stream of goods or services and are not a producer of any kind of products. Instead, our organization’s procurement is demand driven by internal customers needing tools to do their job or the need to acquire external services such as consultants, subject matter expertise etc. For this exercise, I will put the focus on one of our more frequent purchases such as workstations.
Especially since our organization is in the middle of a expansion and reorganisation, many workstations will need to be purchases over the next few months. As the lead time for this product is around a couple of months it is important to understand the supply chain for planning purposes. In a process where we will have limited time lines, the company should be able to ensure timely delivery and understand how long the order to delivery process takes. Also, the supply chain will show certain potential bottleneck areas to consider.
As the orders we are placing will exceed their usual inventory levels we need to consider all aspects involved to meet our target dates. 2. The workstation Supply Chain Map = Indicates number of days for this process 3. Above is a detailed version of our organization’s supply chain for acquiring office workstations. We are the end consumer in this supply chain. RGO is the only authorized retailer of Steelcase office products in Alberta and Steelcase is the manufacturer of these workstations. Since we are the end consumer I will describe the supply chain in reverse.
Upon the COMPANY determining the need and the quantity of an order, this order would be placed with RGO Office Products, a dealer in office furniture and other related products and the only Alberta supplier of the Steelcase workstations we use companywide. RGO would then check with the Steelcase Warehouse/distributor for inventory in stock, who would then place an order with the plant for the quantities required. The supply chain shows the lead times (number in the boxes) for all suppliers to produce and deliver the required quantities to the assembly plant.
The numbers in the map indicate the number of days associated with every step of production, assembly and delivery/transportation times. The Supply Chain Map above is a high level map of the involvement of the different supply chain components involved, based on several assumptions of the actual supply chain. Steelcase outsources the delivery and manufacturing of the several main components of a works station and Steelcase assembles the workstation in their manufacturing plant.
A warehousing and distribution company is responsible for maintaining certain levels of inventory and distributing the products to the retailer who is responsible for supplying the products to the end user. The purpose of the map is to show the main components, and delivery/manufacturing times involved as indicated in the number (of days) for each step in the supply chain. For large orders involving the large restructuring the COMPANY is undergoing, we need to understand the supply chain and the ordering time frames to obtain our orders in a reasonable time frame.