Key Strategic Issues in Supply Chain Domain Pertaining to Battery Industry.

Abstract

This research paper identifies the key strategic issues in operations and supply chain management for the automobile battery industry. Supply chain management (SCM) is all about an integrated approach to developing a bridge among the suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, and customers. This eventually helps to distribute the end-product at the right place and at the right time. In order to minimize the system-wide cost component while assessing its requirement, SCM can be considered as a logical step for profit share and market share maximizing of a firm. Strategic issues concerning supply chain management in the Indian automotive battery industries are assessing demand, meeting the same with supply, creating the essential bridge between demand and supply through the network. For demand, the main issue is forecasting, and in the automotive battery industry, as they offer new replacement of faulty batteries for accepted warranty claims, forecasting also includes the estimation of warranty replacements along with sales projections. For meeting supply, production planning is the key strategy for consideration, whose complexity is compounded with multiple factors having different product mix. For creating the agile network, inventory planning is the key strategic driver, primarily as dispatches occur at stages being location-specific, material-specific and time-bound.