Managing Beyond the Limits of the Individual Enterprise: An Opportunity to Get Competitive Advantage

Abstract

When customers purchase products, they are bringing a process to a close that had begun days, months or years before and that had started with the raw materials being procured. Up to the point of purchase the whole sequence of activities and all the value added to the product had had to be properly managed. A firm should not lose control over its product until it reaches its final target. Restricting management only to what occurs within the firm therefore very possibly implies that opportunities for gaining sustainable competitive advantages are lost. When the phenomenon of globalization, the rapid developments in technologies, the rise in logistics costs and increased competition are taken into account, it seems clear that organizations are competing less and less between themselves individually, and much more as parts of the supply chains to which they belong. It is for this reason that this paper focuses on analyzing the management of the downstream flows of materials and information from the raw materials supplier right to the final customer and also the returns upstream: Supply Chain Management.