Supply-Chain Management Issues In The Oil And Gas Industry.pdfVIP

Journal of Business Economics Research – June 2007 Volume 5, Number 6 27 Supply-Chain Management Issues In The Oil And Gas Industry Christopher M. Chima, (E-mail: cchima@), California State University, Dominguez Hills ABSTRACT The oil and gas industry is involved in a global supply-chain that includes domestic and international transportation, ordering and inventory visibility and control, materials handling, import/export facilitation and information technology. Thus, the industry offers a classic model for implementing supply-chain management techniques. In a supply-chain, a company is linked to its upstream suppliers and downstream distributors as materials, information, and capital flow through the supply-chain. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of supply-chain management in the oil and gas industry. This paper also discusses the application of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) to supply-chain management issues. Then, several strategies are examined for improving supply-chains in the oil and gas industry. Finally, two case studies are introduced to show how improving supply-chain logistics in the oil and gas industry can improve efficiency and the bottom line. INTRODUCTION upply- chain management (SCM) can be defined as the configuration, coordination and continuous improvement of a sequentially organized set of operations. The goal of supply- chain management is to provide maximum customer service at the lowest cost possible. A customer is anyone who uses the output of a process. Therefore, the customer?s customer is important to any organization that is focused on customer service. In a supply-chain, a company will link to its suppliers upstream and to its distributors downstream in order to serve its customers. Usually, materials, information, capital, labor, technology, financial assets and other resources flow through the supply-chain. Sin