Traditionally, marketing, distribution, planning, manufacturing, and the purchasing

organizations along the supply chain operated independently. These organizations have
their own objectives and these are often conflicting. Marketing's objective of high
customer service and maximum sales dollars conflict with manufacturing and distribution
goals. Many manufacturing operations are designed to maximize throughput and lower
costs with little consideration for the impact on inventory levels and distribution
capabilities. Purchasing contracts are often negotiated with very little information beyond
historical buying patterns. The result of these factors is that there is not a single,
integrated plan for the organization---there were as many plans as businesses. Clearly,
there is a need for a mechanism through which these different functions can be integrated
together. Supply chain management is a strategy through which such integration can be
achieved.

There seems to be a universal agreement on what a supply chain is. Jayashankar et al.
[25] defines a supply chain to be
A network of autonomous or semi-autonomous business entities collectively responsible
for procurement, manufacturing, and distribution activities associated with one or more
families of related products.
Lee and Billington [17] have a similar definition:
A supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into
intermediate goods and then final products, and deliver the products to customers through
a distribution system.
And Ganeshan and Harrison [12] has yet another analogous definition:
A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the
functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate
and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers.

According to Wikipedia.org
Supply Chain Management (SCM): Supply chain management (SCM) is the process of
planning, implementing, and controlling the operations of the supply chain with the
purpose of satisfying customer requirements as efficiently as possible. Supply chain
management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, workinprocess
inventory, and finished goods from pointoforigin to pointofconsumption
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_Chain_Management).

The definition one American professional association put forward is that Supply Chain
Management encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in
sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management activities. Importantly, it
also includes coordination and collaboration with channel partners, which can be
suppliers, intermediaries, third-party service providers, and customers. In essence, Supply
Chain Management integrates supply and demand management within and across
companies. More recently, the loosely coupled, self-organizing network of businesses
that cooperates to provide product and service offerings has been called the Extended
Enterprise.