Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Hi Marris,

Since instructors monitor this site for students cheating, make sure you use the proper citation for this information in your paper.

Supply chains are best explained with diagrams which I can't do here, but I can try to describe them:

A supply chain in a traditional offline B-to-C looks like this:

Supplier >>>Producer>>>Wholesaler>>>Retailer>>> Consumer

In an e-supply chain where typically disintermediation has taken place (to make it more efficient) it looks like this:

Disintermediation in Direct Marketing:

Supplier>>>Producer>>>Consumer

Disintermediation of the Retailer:

Supplier>>>Producer>>>Wholesaler>>>Consumer

For the sake of throwing in a reintermediary it would now look like this:

Supplier>>>Producer>>>Electronic Reintermediation on the Internet>>>Consumer

A B-to-B supply chain differs in that they are hugely complex, much more so than a B-to-C. In both offline and online business they are very complex processes in operation at all points along the B-to-C supply chain up to where a product reaches a consumer (and beyond, see "afterlife" below).

Because they are so complex, they can only be fully explained in a diagram, but I will try lay it out here:

A simple supply chain, online or offline, links a company that manufactures or assembles a product with its suppliers, distributors and customers.

There is a flow of materials among the various partners, as well as a flow of returns.

So the supply chain contains three parts:

1) The upstream which includes suppliers and their sub-suppliers and their sub-suppliers etc.

2) The internal supply chain which includes all the processes used in transforming the inputs received from the above suppliers to the outputs, from the time the inputs enter an organization to the time that the product(s) go to distribution.

3) The downstream which includes all the activities involved in delivering the product to final customers, including the "afterlife" that is, where the product ends up after it has served its useful life - recycle, reuse, refuse, etc.

The important thing to remember about supply chains is that they involve activities throughout the entire product life cycle, from "cradle to grave".

Just like in a B-to-C, B-to-B supply chains are open to disintermediation and then reintermediation anywhere that inefficiencies exist, but again, due to their complexity you would need to look at all the processes and partners and identify the inefficiencies and determine what could be disintermediated in an "e-business" model.