International Logistics - Tate and Lyle Report Essay

International Logistics - Tate and Lyle Report - Essay Example Logistics or supply chain management is based upon two core perspectives. The first idea is based upon the fact that the end product used by the users is the effort of numerous organisations. In this context, the term organisation is referred as supply chain. The second perspective has been the fact that although the supply chain has been inexistence since a long period of time, most of the organisations have not paid due attention towards it and few businesses who have understood the importance of the supply chain have not managed it in a proper way. Therefore, this has led to disorganized and ineffective supply chain. From these two perspectives, supply chain management can be explained as the management of the supply chain activities for the purpose of maximising the value of the customers and thus achieve competitive advantages. Supply chain management tries to demonstrate the efforts made for the purpose of developing and operating a profitable supply chain in the best possible way. It is worthy of mentioning that supply chain management encompasses broad range of the activities such as development of the product, sourcing, production along with logistics and the Information Technology (IT) that assist in synchronisation of these activities. The firms that tend to make up the supply chain are found to be interrelated via physical flow and information flow. Information flows assist the partners of the supply chain to integrate long-term plans and thus monitor the day-to-day flow of the goods, up and down the supply chain. While on the other hand, the physical flow is concerned with the transformation along with movement, storage of the goods as well as services (Handfield, 2011). The report is about the worldwide supply chain management of Tate & Lyle which is one of the providers of distinct and competent ingredients to numerous sectors such as food, beverage as well as other industries. Since the company has a large manufacturing plant and innovative tech nology, the company is capable of turning the raw materials into competent materials for its customers (Tate & Lyle, 2011). The most innovative tool that the companies can use for the purpose of improving the logistics as well as the Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes is considered to be the electronic procurement. It is the electronic procurement that assists the companies to get rid of the challenges that the industry faces on the regular basis. Through the electronic procurement system the goods and the services can be bought online. It is via electronic business that the procurement process is converted online and thus all the geographically dispersed employees tend to coordinate online (Kothari & Et. Al., 2005). It can be mentioned that for applying the e-procurement solution, great deal of money is required. In the recent times, most of industries are trying to focus upon the cost