How does value chain management differ from supply chain management?
The difference lays both in the nature and the scope of these management techniques. Supply chain management focuses on optimizing logistical and capacity issues. Though strategically important, specifically for managing and controlling manufacturing, inventory levels, and shipping activities, its use is limited to addressing operational process issues of how products and services flow downstream (even though triggering mechanisms often are linked to some demand chain management system). Value chain management draws on supply chain and demand chain management capabilities for improving the operational performance of firms, but its primary focus lays in capturing essential strategic elements of the performance and efficiency of their customers solutions in order to bolster their own competitive advantage. Firms do not require supply chain management systems to effectively garner the benefits of the value chain management approach.
