1、外文翻译之一 Supply chain cost management and value-based pricing Author： Martin Christopher , John Gattorna Nationality： United Kingdom， Australia Source： Industrial Marketing Management 34 (2005) 115 121 原文正文： 3. Reducing the cash-to-cash cycle time From an organizational standpoint, a critical performa
2、nce measure is cash-to-cash cycle time. From the moment when a business spends money with suppliers for materials and components, through the manufacturing and assembly process to final distribution and after-market support, time is being consumed. That time is represented by the number of days of i
3、nventory in the pipeline, whether as raw materials, work-in-progress, goods in transit, or time taken to process orders, issue replenishment orders, as well as time spent in manufacturing, time in queues or bottlenecks and so on. Detailed analysis of logistics pipelines often reveals that the length
4、 of these cash-to-cash cycles can be significantoften measured in months rather than days. Anything that can be done to refine that end-to-end time clearly means a release of working capital and hence a reduction in cost. The likelihood also is that most of the time in the pipeline will be non-value
5、-adding time and, in particular, it will be idle Time or time spent as inventory that is not on the move. Supply chain mapping can enable the identification of opportunities for reducing inventory and hence cost (Scott & Westbrook, 1991). (Fig. 3) shows an actual map for a particular product, a clot
6、hing item. The vertical lines reflect the average inventory over the period of investigation at each step in the chain. Examination of the map highlights the fact that most inventory seems to lie at the interfaces between organizational entities in the chain. In fact, there is a duplication of inven
7、torythe supplier carries inventory, their customer carries 毕业论文： 学生姓名： 定稿时间： - - inventory of the same product. Why is this? The reason is that this inventory is held by both parties as safety stock. Because there is no clear line of sight between the two adjacent entities in the chainno shared info
8、rmation on the rate of orders or usageboth parties have to buffer against uncertainty with additional inventory. Remove the uncertainty and the need for that inventory is removed also. Essentially, the root cause of this excess inventory is lack of visibility caused by lack of communication. Fortuna
9、tely, there is now a growing recognition of the importance of shared information in the supply chain. In consumer goods distribution, for example, the adoption of Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) is beginning to make a difference. CPFR, as the phrase suggests, involves the
10、 joint determination of forecasts through pooled knowledge and information. Based on this agreed view of demand over the forecast horizon, the supplier takes responsibility for the replenishment of supplies based upon the actual rate of sale or usage. Significant inventory reductions have been repor
11、ted in numerous pilot applications along with simultaneous improvement in sales revenue as a result of improved availability (Ireland & Bruce, 2000). However, despite all these types of initiatives, a fundamentally new approach to pricing is required in order to extract further value； this comes in
12、the form of the supply chain alignment concept discussed below. 4. Aligning supply chains with customers to create more value 毕业论文： 学生姓名： 定稿时间： - - As competitive pressures have rapidly increased over the last decade, we have been forced to look beyond conventional wisdom because this only leads to
13、diminishing returns. For example, for a long time, we have accepted the convention that as service levels rise, so also does the cost-to-serve, exponentially. However, we now understand that this equation is influenced by both over- and under servicing that leads directly to low cost-effectiveness a
14、nd lost revenue opportunities. Inappropriate pricing regimes and trading terms are integral to this inefficient use of resources. The more realistic paradigm is that cost-to-serve will actually decrease (up to a point) as service profiles increase (Gattorna, 2003). (See Fig. 4). However, this phenom
15、enon only occurs through improved re-allocation of the firms resources； we call this strategic alignment, or simply alignment (Gattorna,1998). Driven mostly by the pursuit of functional specialism, the concept of alignment has been largely overlooked, but in todays operating environment, that is whe
16、re the value lies. In short, if enterprises wish to produce sustained operational and financial performance, they must align their strategies, cultural capabilities and leadership styles with customers. Unfortunately, very few organizations in the world today have mastered the art of linking these f
17、our levels. The key lies in interpreting the marketplace, and doing so by going beyond economic concepts into the world of human behaviour as depicted in( Fig. 5). For the purposes of this paper, we will concentrate on levels 1 and 2 of the alignment model. From our empirical work, it has become obvious that the best way to segment markets is along buyer behaviour lines. Unfortunately, most enterprises use internal parameters that give little indication of how customers
