The Accredited Supply Chain Professional

COPYRIGHT © 2020 ZULK SHAMSUDDIN, PhD / GAFM ACADEMY

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-7948-9938-4

INTRODUCTION

Supply Chain Professionals play a major role in the manufacturing process. From the time a company begins the new product development process to the time the finished product is shipped, supply chain managers, or SCMs, impact their companies by lending their expertise to developing strategies to increase safety, efficiency, and productivity.

Supply Chain Professionals must be able to analyze data and processes, find creative solutions, generate reports and present findings to upper management and other departments, communicate with external suppliers and buyers, comprehend legal documents, and develop lasting relationships with others. They must be proactive problem solvers with a desire to collaborate with others.

The Accredited Supply Chain Professional ™ (ASCP) is a world-class certification for individuals with technical knowledge, skills and experience in supply chain management, procurement management, contract management, tendering management, leadership management, and business communication.

It forms the basis of the assessment that applicants must pass to gain the Accredited Supply Chain Professional status and inclusion in the Directory of Certified Professionals of The GAFM Academy of Finance and Management ®.

Stand out from the crowd with the GAFM® Accredited Supply Chain Professional certification and get noticed by top recruiters. Introduce yourself with this exclusive membership card during networking, business events, conferences, anywhere. 

Accredited Supply Chain Professional skills certification sets you apart from others.

Benefits of Becoming Accredited Supply Chain Professional ™

Personal recognition from your peers in supply chain management and other professions.

Enhanced CV to stand out in the job market.

A framework for the development of your career.

International recognition.

Assurance for clients of high standards and ethical practice.

Use of the post-nominal ASCP or Accredited Supply Chain Professional ™

Increased understanding, helping you to work more effectively.

What is a Certificate?

Earning a certificate is about education. Certificates are academic credentials awarded by colleges, universities, or other educational institutions. Students in certificate programs learn new knowledge in a specific subject or discipline and earn a certificate by successfully completing the coursework. An ideal student for a certificate program is someone who is willing to go through the experience of growing their own skillset, being real about what they want to learn, and working with others, says Jennifer Diamond, an instructor for the UW Certificate in Project Management. Many certificate programs have few, if any, admission requirements, making them an excellent option if you want to move forward in your career. The programs are usually noncredit and take less time to complete than a degree. Certificates are commonly listed on resumes as education, and some meet education requirements for first-time or renewed certifications.

What is a Certification?

When you have the professional knowledge you need, a certification allows you to prove it.  Certifications indicate mastery of skills or standards. Professional certifications are granted by industry groups or career-related organizations. These groups assess your qualifications, usually through an exam or application process. Many certifications include the privilege to use a related designation following your professional title. Certification differs from a license, which permits you to work in a certain profession and is usually issued by a government or regulatory agency.

Benefits Of Certification

Certification helps in learning new technologies, skills, and abilities for a specific promotion. Earning a new certification or an advanced certification in a particular area of expertise can help in advancing your career.

Professional certification shows consumers and potential employers that you are committed to your profession and are well-trained. It gives them confidence in your abilities and knowledge. Certification makes you more valuable to employers, so you can expect to earn more than someone without certification.

Certifications can give you the chance to learn needed skills and be a quick way to show employers you have those skills. On the other hand, certifications can require studying or coursework, and cost up to several hundred dollars to take.

Certification helps in learning new technologies, skills, and abilities for a specific promotion.

Earning a new certification or an advanced certification in a particular area of expertise can help in advancing your career.

Professional certification shows consumers and potential employers that you are committed to your profession and are well-trained. It gives them confidence in your abilities and knowledge.

Certification makes you more valuable to employers, so you can expect to earn more than someone without certification.

Certifications can give you the chance to acquire needed skills and be a quick way to show employers you have those skills.

Skills Certification

The Accredited Supply Chain Professional certification addresses the following skills and competencies.

Supply Chain Management

Procurement Management

Contract Management

Tender Management

Leadership Management

Business Communication

To apply: https://gafm.com.my/application-for-certification/

Planning and Strategy

Supply Chain Professional develop and maintain various supply chain plans and strategies. This may involve coordinating and overseeing manufacturing operations in order to forecast orders and meet customer demands. They must optimize operational resources while executing cost reductions and inventory controls. They conduct monthly capacity and performance analyses to ensure that forecasts and schedules are aligned and integrated. They execute demand flow verification processes, engage in short- and long-term planning and conduct inventory analyses for warehouse utilization and manufacturing coordination. Supply Chain Professional must be comfortable using enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and warehouse management systems (WMS).

Supply chain management (SCM) is the optimization of a product's creation and flow from raw material sourcing to production, logistics and delivery to the final customer. SCM encompasses the integrated planning and execution of processes required to manage the movement of materials, information and financial capital in activities that broadly include demand planning, sourcing, production, inventory management and storage, transportation or logistics and returning excess or defective products. Supply chain management relies on both business strategy, specialized software and collaboration to work. Because it's such an expansive, complex undertaking, each partner from suppliers to manufacturers and beyond must communicate and work together to create efficiencies, manage risk and adapt quickly to change.

Supply chain management involves looking beyond one organization and imagining all the entities involved in manufacturing and shipping a product or service, and then linking all of those entities so they can work efficiently and seamlessly as a team. That means uniting customers, suppliers, shippers, and more recently competitors, into a supply network for the most efficient use of time and resources. There are several key functions that make up the supply chain. All functions have their own cycle times, which have to be addressed for cost containment to be achieved.

Procurement of both raw goods and materials, as well as components, is a good place to start. Then there’s the manufacturing process itself.

The warehousing and shipping aspect of the supply chain used to be called distribution and is now commonly called logistics – often ‘third-party logistics’ as much of this work is now outsourced to independent contractors.

Then there is the actual transport and delivery of goods and services, both the finished product to customers and retail outlets as well as shipment of materials required to both support a company and manufacture a product.

Once you can visualize the interaction of all these parties and functions, it is possible to move to the main purpose of supply chain management i.e., cost containment through reduced cycle times and improved inventory management that just-in-time shipping makes possible. Yes, advanced technologies have benefited the development of supply chain practices and are spurring growth of supply networks that function in a networked, Web-enabled environment. But for almost a decade many companies have practiced the rudiments of supply chain management using a phone, fax and some form of computerization and electronic communication. Advanced technology is a crucial factor in the trend towards moving away from the supply chain and creating a supply network, which is expected to shear away additional costly inefficiencies. The availability of the Internet/Web as a transmission tool and staging platform in cyberspace for an array of supply chain functions such as sourcing, procurement, and tracking and tracing of goods and materials that makes for additional efficiency and savings. The networked, Web-enabled world is the next stage of supply chain management where the whole shebang is heading but companies without these capabilities can still gain benefit from supply chain management

Supply Chain Professional play a major role in the manufacturing process. From the time a company begins the new product development process to the time the finished product is shipped, Supply Chain Professional impact their companies by lending their expertise to developing strategies to increase safety, efficiency, and productivity. Supply Chain Professional must be able to analyze data and processes, find creative solutions, generate reports and present findings to upper management and other departments, communicate with external suppliers and buyers, comprehend legal documents, and developing lasting relationships with others. They must be proactive problem solvers with a desire to collaborate with others. Supply Chain Professional is responsible for overseeing and managing company's overall supply chain and logistics strategy and operations in order to maximize the process efficiency and productivity. In addition, they play a crucial role in developing and maintaining good relationships with vendors and distributors. Regardless of the industry, a Supply Chain Professional will have similar job duties. Supply Chain Professional are prepared for these duties through earning a bachelor's degree in logistics, business administration or supply chain management.

Benefits of Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management creates a number of benefits that translate to higher profits, better brand image and greater competitive advantage. These include the following:

better ability to predict and meet customer demand;

better supply chain visibility, risk management and predictive capabilities;

fewer process inefficiencies and less product waste;

improvements in quality;

increased sustainability, both from a societal and an environmental standpoint;

lower overhead;

improvements in cash flow; and

more efficient logistics.

Warehousing Management

Supply Chain Professional promote the design, development, and implementation of warehouse, distribution and logistics solutions. They manage labor costs, personnel productivity, inventory levels, data accuracy and stocking strategies. They measure and report on the effectiveness of departmental activities and operations. They often create and maintain safety work instructions and standard operating procedures. Supply Chain Professional establish and adjust work procedures to meet warehouse demands, production schedules, established workflows and OSHA safety guidelines. They implement strategies to improve service quality, employee efficiency, equipment performance and interdepartmental communication.

Inventory Management

How best to manage that inventory for speedy shipment, weed out the bottlenecks is one challenge that technology vendors worldwide are working on today. The old paper system that required unloading each truckload for resorting and repleting in a warehouse is too

time-consuming in today’s global market. As we will look at more closely in the coming chapters, computerized barcoding and radio-frequency technology have evolved to the point where picking and pelleting are often technology-governed. In the most advanced combination of these technologies, employees wearing minicomputers direct their warehouse picking. In the more sophisticated applications, they wear radio-frequency (RF) rings to scan bar codes for product identification rather than carry RF ‘‘guns,’’ thereby leaving both hands free for other tasks.

Software manufacturers are producing the ‘‘brains’’ behind the automated warehouse, the solutions that allow warehouse managers to use computers as a tool for directing the picking/pelleting process. These vendors advise customers to view inventory management as a fairly consistent process that doesn’t vary much from product-line to product-line. And the Internet/Web are evolving as transmission tools and cyberspace staging grounds for logistics activities, including tracking and tracing of goods and shipments. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are also being coupled with RF technology for speedier, more accurate picking and replenishment.

Logistics Management

Logistics is the function responsible for the flow of materials from suppliers into an organization, through operations within the organization,