My Management Collection-Defining the Supply Chain Management?

What is Supply Chain Management?
As per the Institute of Supply chain management Inc, US, SCM can be defined as design, and management of a huge, value added process across organizational boundaries to meet the real needs of the end customers. Personally from my observation, supply chain management is finding the most optimized way to delivery
value to customers and the organization as well.
Continuing with more of would explain that when you put together the technological resources which would include the most sophisticated tools available(from forcasting to inventory management), to the hardware side of the ever changing hardware with the people working with them, thats is termed as Supply Chain integration. Ain't no rocket science yet.
There was no substantial need felt for any of these, until the business started going above bounds and the aspects which were covered by the business house themselves, was let off to be a responsibility of the vendor/supplier itself and this fusion led to more management joints and nut bolts needed to get the system working. These days, for a huge business to run successfully, most of the collaboration is fused from the outside entities to the business like, suppliers, distributors etc. Such an arrangement of lesser control and more integration gave all the supply chain concepts and Logisitics handling, inventory management, distribution and stock handling took as much of concentration as forcasting the trends took the industry share.
Supply Chain Major Focus Areas:
Some of the major areas of concentration, in todays business are:

• Distrubution Network Configuration.
• Distribution Strategy
• Information
• Inventory Management

1,Distribution network configuration: The words can sound too techie but in real terms its a very common sense phenomenon but unrealistic to come to terms with. DNC takes into account of Number of location of suppliers, production facilities, distribution centres, Warehouses and customers. Well, if some one could find a perfect resoution, life would be a better one but it one of the tough bets to conlude upon. The real analogy would include, having a store and then find all the permutations and combinations of cost involved in different no of suppliers, no of carriers, their no of shifts of work and then the conclusion telling us the optimal figure good for the business.
2, Distribution Strategy: I shall try and write another writeup on different distribution strategies to explain more in details, but for the completeness, the strategy to be choosen could from either Centralized Vs Decentralized, Cross docking or Shipment directly, Pull or Push Strategies, Third party logistics etc. Its again basically a variable to choose how you want to distribute your stuff.
3, Information:Integrate systems and processes through the supply chain to share valuable information, including demand signals , forecasts, inventory and transportation.Its as simple and tough as that.
4, Inventory Management:Quantity and location of inventory including raw material, work-in-process and finished goods service providers and customers.
I shall be writing on different aspects of supply chain management and shall try to write another one on forcasting as that is one of my favs.