Supply Chain Creates Faster Response

In the end of 1990s, the trend of speedy delivery of products and services starts to emerge. The trend has become a critical factor of winning new customers and retaining a company as market leader. This emerging trend has created the need for a more effective management approach of quick delivery of products or services to the end users. The supply chain management approach offers the ability of greater flexibility in creating new products at a faster level. Supply Chain Management creates the ability of the company to respond much more quickly to the customers’ fast demand patterns. As Martin states, ‘greater market share and customer loyalty can be gained by quick and reliable response to customers’ changing needs’. The life cycle of product nowadays demands a faster response from the industry. The rapid change demand pattern requires extensive information sharing among the supply chain partners. Companies that are not fast enough to cope with the fast changing demand of end customer will lose a certain amount of market share.

As an example, in 1994, Compaq, a personal computer company has acknowledged their inability to respond faster to a sudden upsurge demands have caused the company a sale lost of $1 billion dollars. This example shows how companies now must adapt fast to changing pattern of consumer demands with effective management and monitoring.