Abstract:

Supply chain management (SCM) deals with the procurement and assembly of goods, from raw material to the consumer. With the growing prevalence of offshore manufacturing and suppliers' reliance on "just-in-time" inventory management, SCM has become both astoundingly complex and critical to companies' competitiveness. This essay examines how data works in global supply chains, focusing on SAP SCM, the huge but hard-to-access SCM software with the greatest market share. It argues that SCM is characterized by two countervailing tendencies: the demand for perfect information about goods and movement, and the need to erect strategic barriers to the fullest knowledge about supply chains. Counterintuitively, this selective obscurantism is what makes supply chains so fast and efficient.

摘要：

供应链管理 (SCM) 处理从原材料到消费者的商品的采购和组装。随着离岸制造的日益流行和供应商对“准时制”库存管理的依赖，SCM 变得非常复杂，而且对公司的竞争力至关重要。本文探讨了数据在全球供应链中的运作方式，重点关注 SAP SCM，这是一款体积庞大但难以访问的 SCM 软件，具有最大的市场份额。它认为 SCM 的特点是两个相反的趋势：对关于货物和运动的完美信息的需求，以及对最全面的供应链知识设置战略壁垒的需要。与直觉相反，这种选择性的蒙昧主义使供应链如此快速和高效。