Research Essay on Supply Chain Management in India

Question

Task: Write a research essay based on a problem and solution essay model structure

Topic: Choose a topic of interest that is related to your further studies at university. Your teacher will help you with this. Please see the EAP2 ‘Sample topics’ guide for some ideas.

Answer

1. Problem Statement
Supply chain management or SCM can be explained as a significant management regarding the flow of commodities and services. This flow may involve the storage as well as the movement of raw materials, inventories related to work in process and also the final products from the origin point of the production to the consumption point. It should be remembered that in a supply chain, all of the interlinked and interconnected networks and channels are demanded by the end consumers. According to some of the authors and economists, the management of supply chain can be referred to as the planning, designing, executing, monitoring and controlling the activities of supply chain along with the motive of making net value, competitive infrastructure, balanced supply along with demand. Now it is known that India is considered as a developing country. In a developing country like India, there are various problems related to the supply chain management. One of the major problems in this connection is the lack of availability of good information. Necessary information like POS data and capacity of production etc are not available properly. Even if there is an availability of such data, the accuracy is not up to the mark. In addition, there is a problem related to limitations in the infrastructure in India. Geographical and political issues are some unavoidable parts of the Indian economic system. Except that there is also the problem of unavailability of the intellectual property as well as patent controls. The consistency in the tax policy in India affects the structure of pricing and competitive advantages of the companies who produce in a particular state but sell across India.

2. Aim and objectives
This aim of this research essay is to determine the factors related to supply chain management and the issues that are impacting the supply chain management of India

Objectives

• To analyse the effectiveness of supply chain management in India
• To identify the issues related to supply chain management
• To evaluate the impacts of supply chain management
• To suggest proper recommendations related to the identified issues of supply chain management in India

3. Methodology
Literature review
Major ideas related to the supply chain management in India: ‘Supply Chain Management Scenario in India', this article has shown that the basic concept of supply chain management is dependent on two basic ideas in India. One of those ideas is that in practical life, each and every commodity which reaches to the end consumer represents an aggregate effort of multiple numbers of institutions. These institutions are considered to be the supply chain. Another idea related to this topic is that when there is a long-term existence of the supply chain. As commented by Mangan, Lalwani & Lalwani, (2016), most of the organisations pay attention to the things which are happening near their boundary. As a result, the supply chains become ineffective. As per the Global Supply Chain Forum," Supply chain Management is the integration of key business processes from and user through original suppliers that provides products, services and information that add value for customers and other stakeholders." On the other hand, a network" is a structure where a number of nodes are related to each other by specific threads."

Supply chain decisions: The decisions regarding supply chain management can be classified into two major categories. First one is the strategic decision and the second one is the operational decision (Kabra & Ramesh, 2015).

“The strategic decisions are typically based on the broader time span and these decisions are closely linked to corporate strategies” (Jabbour & de Sousa Jabbour, 2016).

"The operational decisions are dependent on a shorter time period. In this case, the main focus is always on all the activities of daily basis” (Luthra, Garg & Haleem, 2014).

Theory based on supply chain management: As per Monczka et al. (2015), the main goal of SCM is incorporating activities across all the institutions to provide consumer value. SCM is required for so many reasons. Such reasons are improving the quality of operations, making the outsourcing better, raising profits, increasing consumer satisfaction, dealing with the competitive pressures, growing globalization and so on. There are some authors who have explained SCM as an operation involving a flow of goods and materials. Some of these materials and goods are observed as a process of management and some of them are viewed as a complete integrated system.

Figure 1: Basic Supply Chain (Source: Monczka et al. 2015)

The basic supply chain can be shown with the help of the following example depicted in terms of Figure 1. It can be understood from the above figure that all of the suppliers, the manufacturers, retailers, customers and distributors are included in a supply chain. It must be remembered in this connection that the consumers are the major focus of the supply chain. This is because of the fact that the basic objective of the existence of a supply chain is nothing but to fulfill the requirements of the customers. Initially, SCM was related to the management of inventories of all of the functions within the supply chain. According to some of the authors, SCM has engaged the management of the flows in between the stages of a supply chain to reduce the total expense at the minimum level. This, in turn, implies that supply chain management will involve the management of the flows of goods, information and also the finance downstream and upstream within the supply chain (Rogers et al. 2016).

Evaluating the Data collection: This research essay will follow mixed methods for collecting data from relevant sources. It will help to conduct the research in a valid way. As commented by Luthra, Garg & Haleem (2015), both qualitative and quantitative research designs will be followed to evaluate the data that will be collected from secondary sources which involve magazines, newspapers, online articles and reports of supply chain management.

The necessary secondary data has been collected from some journals, newspapers and books and also through various search engines through the internet.

Interviews: In this context, the interviews will be conducted to explore the ways each and every individual explains a topic and utilizes the findings to construct a collection instrument of qualitative data. Whereas, primary data will also be collected by conducting interviews to know the opinions or views of individuals. In this research essay, the research will be conducted by interviews by engaging managers of Indian organisation to involve their perceptions which will be considered as effective information for conducting the research for future implementations or interventions.

4. Secondary data and methods of analysis
In this section of the research essay, secondary sources are evaluated to gather complete ideas on the supply chain management and issues that are identified. These articles helped to analyse the gaps which created barriers to conducting the research (Mathiyazhagan et al. 2015). While conducting the research, too old sources were rejected as it lacks current information based on supply chain management. Certain gaps in the year and the information related to each article have been found. This is due to the different opinions of the scholars and researchers, which created a gap between the ideas (Mitra & Datta, 2014). Valid sites have been evaluated to gather valid or relevant information to know the exact issues related to supply chain management in India.

Secondary data for this research essay will be collected from valid and authentic government sites, reports, journals and online articles. This will help to analyse the statistical data further for getting depth knowledge related to topic or research. After gathering relevant data, all data will be analysed by finding a relationship between each factor by considering the demographic and safety variables related to supply chain management. This will help to reduce the identified issues of supply chain management by identifying the relevant source of. In addition, it will also help to bring some interventions for proper development or improvement. The data is collected from certain databases which involve Public Library, OCED library, Open DOAR, India database and Digital library.