Many of the problems associated with supply chain management are closely related to the typical problems of operations management. Instead of the question: “How should we make this?”, it becomes: “How should we get this from point A to B?” It may be best to ship the product straight from the factory to the customer, but it may be prohibitively expensive to do so. Many firms find it easier and cheaper to ship products to distribution warehouses first and distribute to customers on a more local level.

Supply chain management refers to the entire process of obtaining the raw goods from a supplier, converting those goods into products, shipping products, and placing them in front of customers. Operations management typically focuses on the production side of supply chain management, but a good manager is concerned with the entire process. In this unit, we will look at the management of firm resources on the supply side as well as the distribution of finished goods to the consumer.