Supply Chain Design

Introduction
A company with a well-established supply chain management system may have a
competitive advantage over those without. Through the supply chain design, the company can
collect the goods produced within or sourced from outside, sort them, and dispatch them to
various destinations for customers to buy them. The company can only do these tasks if it has
well established Supply Network, assembly, and distribution. This paper aims to discuss the
three major elements of supply chain design intensely.
Supply Network
A supply network is a collection of suppliers that helps a company or a business make
and deliver products or services to customers. To be efficient, it should be examined to
ascertain its efficiency and effectiveness. According to Braziotis et al. (2013), examining the
supply network allows one to explain the flow of both material and data. In addition, this
analysis allows one to analyze the policies and activities that impact the supply chain.
While a supply network is majorly comprised of several supply chains, using a supply
network requires a high level of analysis of both the quantitative and the qualitative
information about the companies or clients in the supply chains. Considerations such as
factory capacity and location, potential price level fluctuations, distribution capacity, supplier
and product considerations, stock control, and customer relations are made using the
company's supply network.
A company may enjoy reduced costs in its supply chain through the implementation
of supply networks, thus increasing the profit margin. When it is implemented, the
management must weed out what is not necessary for it to avoid waste and increase
efficiency.
Assembly Supply Chain

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Assembly supply chain design comprises many production organizations or entities
that produce different products or services (Modrak & Marton, 2012). These entities may use
identical or different inputs during the production process. When modeling the Assembly
supply chain, nodes are used such that each node has only one successor by can be given
several predecessors. The nodes represent different elements, including customers and/or
sources of the materials. With this formula, an assembly supply chain model will help come
up with interconnected designs that enhance high efficiency and effectiveness levels.
A company that chooses to use the assembly supply chain design should ensure that
they do a detailed analysis of the elements represented by the nodes and choose the best
model that they will use that is cost-effective and highly efficient. For instance, in the study
of Feng and Zhang (2013), a company that chooses a two-factor assembly model has the
advantage of reduced manufacturing cost and thus can be recommended to be used by many
organizations.
Distribution Network
Generally, a distribution network comprises the goods' steps from the supplier to the
final consumer. These steps may be represented by storehouses, warehouses, and different
transport systems that enhance the movement of products to the final consumers (Corporate
Finance Institute, 2022). The distribution's size and structure depend on many things,
including the size of the firm using the network, the line of production, the condition of the
products, the distance of the final consumers from the producer, and many other factors.
When designing a distribution network, the main factor to consider is the product's
end user. Corporate Finance Institute (2022) argues that because organizations are expected
to expand with time, the distribution channel used should allow room for adjustments in the
future. Additionally, the firm should understand the drivers that should be predetermined in

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designing a distribution network. Like in the supply network and the assembly chain design,
it is essential to analyze it to ensure it is cost-effective.
Conclusion
There are several benefits that a company can have when it uses an appropriate supply chain
design. A company will have to do a detailed analysis of the design it wants to use before
implementing any of the three elements. Additionally, a company should modify the elements
of supply chain design to give room for future alterations in case it grows.