Course Title: Supply Chain Management

Assignment on “The Impact of information technology in supply

chain, Bangladesh Perspectives”
Submitted to:
Ms.Rahima Begum
Assistant Professor
Department of HRM

Submitted By:
Iftakhar Haider
ID: 1903020803515
Major: Finance
Session: Fall 2019
Section: B
Introduction
The exponential growth of Information Technology (IT) with communication technology in
Supply Chain Management is playing a critical role in optimizing decisions of the supply chain
network flow for achieving organizational competitiveness, improving higher service level,
lowering inventory, supply chain costs and reducing electronic risks. To achieve integration and
effective information sharing across and beyond the organizations, Information Technology in
Supply Chain Management is also required. The organizations are moving towards the virtual
supply chain with help of rapid changes in technology and Information Technology applications
like; Electronic Data Exchange, Radio Frequency Identification, Bar Code, Electronic Commerce,
Decision Support system, Enterprises Resource Planning package, etc. It is also easily applicable
in curbing the e-risks. It is to deliver the right product to the right place at the right time at the right
price, say supply chain experts.

Objectives of the Supply Chain

The purpose of the supply chain is to make product available to meet customer demand – and that
includes delivery to the appropriate location, on time, in sufficient quantity. Supply chain
management is focused on doing that in the most efficient and effective way. Everything else is of
secondary importance.

It is logical that companies would focus all of their supply chain efforts on that single overriding
goal – availability. And they do. But it’s easy to get distracted. Individual participants and
managers may be focused on specific objectives that are built into their performance measurement
system and incentives, and that’s a good thing, too, because the purpose of measurements and
incentives is to drive behavior.

Ensuring Efficiency Within Your Operation - For obvious reasons, efficiency is one of the most
important aspects of supply chain. Effectively managing inventory, transportation, and logistics
can be a complex process, but overall understanding how to do it can greatly benefit your
operation. It can be incredibly costly if your company does not have an adequate ERP, MRP, or
APS system. When manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers collaborate on a supply chain system,
it is far much easier to maximize efficiency for your operation.

Optimizing Transportation and Logistics - Another key component within supply chain is
optimizing transportation and logistics. Within an independent business environment, each
company is responsible for its role in ordering, shipping, and transportation of goods. In this
business model, the cost is rather high due to poor timing and collaboration. With supply chain
management, your process should “flow” and have suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and
retailers all on the same page at all times. With SCM, you can plan optimized transportation and
logistics activities with any vendors or buyers that you work with. Orders are automatically put
into a system and alert other facilities that are needed to fulfill this order.
Focusing on Quality Improvement - It is important to keep in mind that providing consumers
with the absolute best value is a goal that is shared by you and your supply chain partners. As you
are more connected with your partners, product and service quality should be enhanced
dramatically. This can also pertain to Quality Function Development (QFD) and allows customers
to tell you what is most valuable within your product or service - which will save you money down
the road. Within a collaborative supply chain, you are creating a system where customer feedback
is enabled to your company and others within your supply chain. These inefficiencies and
drawbacks that are included in the feedback enable you to address any issues that you should focus
on.

Competitive Advantage

Often a company will lack an overall, executive-level agreement on how to leverage IT systems
for the furthering of the organization’s goals. A technology roadmap identifies where the business
wants to be in the future, and how technology can help the enterprise get there, thereby helping a
company to plan the use of IT systems to achieve both short-term and long-term goals.

The use of Information Technology will help to provide you with a real competitive advantage
over other businesses within your industry. This is largely due to the previously listed reasons —
the ability to leverage IT to improve your products and to improve your relations with both
customers and suppliers to help boost your brand reputation. The better your reputation is, the
more you will stand out from your competition.

Additionally, by implementing IT systems into company operations, your company will make
more efficient use of its resources. The money and time you save as a result can then be dedicated
to other areas of improvement throughout the company. Improving your efficiency is practically
akin to increasing your budget, which is a huge advantage.

Survival

A decade ago, you could argue that Information Technology was a luxury reserved for bigger
businesses with bigger budgets. However, that has all changed due to the fact that everyone has
access to newer, more advanced technology — including your customers. This means that in order
to stay relevant within your industry and to keep up with your competitors, you need to implement
IT to simply survive.

Improved Decision Making

Crafting an IT budget is an important and difficult task in any company. But without a technology
roadmap, it is often more difficult to predict what IT systems a business needs to optimally fulfill
its goals. Without a strategy in place, executives are typically unable to know how to strategically
use the requisite IT solutions to fulfill the overarching business vision. Thus, having a technology
roadmap can help a business to effectively budget for the future.
Information Technology software allows you to collect vast amounts of data, including what
individual visitors are doing on your website, how certain web pages are performing and much,
much more.  Not only can you use IT to collect this valuable data, but it will be automatically
organized for you so that you can easily analyze the most important pieces of data, from your
pricing data to your supplier contracts and more.

Importance of Information Technology

The work of most organizations would slow to a crawl without functioning IT systems. You’d be
hard-pressed to find a business that doesn’t at least partially rely on computers and the networks
that connect them. Maintaining a standard level of service, security and connectivity is a huge task,
but it’s not the only priority or potential challenge on their plates.

More and more companies want to implement more intuitive and sophisticated solutions. “IT can
provide the edge a company needs to outsmart, outpace and out-deliver competitors,” says Edward
Kiledjian, a Chief Information Security Officer and technology blogger. Let’s take a look at the
needs that current and future IT specialists will be working on:

Data overload: Businesses need to process huge amounts of data. This requires large amounts of
processing power, sophisticated software and human analytical skills.
Mobile and wireless usages: More employers are offering remote work options that require smart
phones, tablets and laptops with wireless hotspots and roaming ability.
Cloud services: Most businesses no longer operate their own “server farms” to store massive
amounts of data. Many businesses now work with cloud services—third-party hosting platforms
that maintain that data.
Bandwidth for video hosting: Videoconferencing solutions have become more and more popular,
so more network bandwidth is needed to support them sufficiently. 

The impact of SMC in Textile industry - Bangladesh Perspectives:

The supply chain process for manufacturing and service industries started with suppliers,
manufacturers, distributors, retailers, customers and suppliers, service providers, customers and
end with consumers respectively. The customers are the most vital focal point of the supply chain,
since the primary purpose of the existence of any supply chain is to directly or indirectly satisfy
customer needs. The basic supply chain of readymade garment industry in Bangladesh involves
supplier, manufacturer, ultimate buyer and service provider.

Textile & clothing Industry of Bangladesh is the most important segment of Bangladesh Economy
playing the Critical role to its economic development. Although the industry has started the
journey on 1976, but within a short span of time it able to gain immense popularity through the
world RMG (Readymade garments) market. Bangladesh Textile & Clothing Industry is the second
Largest Exporter of RMG sector after China. Apart from that it is fulfilling the cent percent of
Domestic Demand. Textile & clothing industry is covering the largest share of GDP growth of
Bangladesh.

In RMG business, there is a very strong correlation between the business value chain and the
supply chain. The supply chain is mostly controlled by the buyers who control the business. The
supply chain of RMG sector consists of a number of discrete activities. The supply chain
beginning with sourcing of raw material, design and production through to customer, is being
organized as an integrated production system.

In today’s world of globalization many apparel manufacturers are building strong supply chains to
gain advantage over their competitors by offering the best value to their customers. The objectives
of the supply chain and the performance measurements need to be understood in order to build the
most effective supply chain. Performance measurement provides an approach to identify the
success and potential of supply chain management strategies. One major aspect of the supply chain
management is to select the right sources of supply in the global business environment that can
support corporate strategy. Contrary to the conventional adversarial relationships, effective supply
chain management in the new competition suggests seeking close relationships in the long term
with less number of partners.

From the technological perspective the textile & clothing industry of Bangladesh needs more
development as this industry is not as advanced as their American or European counter parts.
Companies including the ones in the garment sector have insufficient technological and
information system framework including the real time and point of sale information among the
supply chain members. They are lacking in technological advancement and far behind in the
implementation of the practices and in spite of its proven necessity this industry is spending very
less on their IT budget .The technologies which garment companies in India mainly use are
computer aide designs(CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing(CAM) , high speed sewing
machines and modern fussing and pressing machines including the wide use of internet; whereas,
use of robots and automation in processes such as inspection and material handling is very low.
Many Companies of this industry are also lacking in the sufficient use of RFID technology in their
supply chain in order to enable the real time traceability of the garment products throughout the
chain.

From merchandising order booking to delivery on time are the biggest challenges ensuring proper
planning of the Cutting, sewing and packing–backed by the proper supply of all its back/sub-
processes like Spinning, Knitting, fabric during and finally ensuring printing, embroidering in the
garments. So, a proper planning/visibility of the big picture of understanding of the end to end
supply chain of the yarn to garments making & delivery is the most challenging.