Supply Chain, Procurement, and Logistics Management

Somehow you're out of stock and overstocked at the same time. The cheap overseas part keeps arriving late and triggering air-freight bills that erase its savings. Your distributor's orders swing far more wildly than anything real customers are doing. And the one supplier who could shut you down is two tiers deep, where nobody's looking. None of these are bad luck. They're what a supply chain does when it's run one decision at a time. This course teaches you to run it as one connected system instead. You'll learn to map your network and its flows, then work the master trade-off every choice hangs on — responsiveness against cost — across the five things that move the numbers: planning inventory, sourcing and evaluating suppliers, managing logistics, and surviving disruption. The inventory math is the real thing, taught for decisions, not exams: how much to order (EOQ), when to reorder, how much safety stock a service level actually costs, why fill rate isn't the same as service level, and how pooling stock cuts the buffer. On the buying side, you'll segment spend with the Kraljic matrix, compare suppliers on total cost of ownership rather than sticker price, and read Incoterms 2020 so you know where cost and risk change hands. Then logistics — modes, warehouses, how many distribution centers and where — and finally risk: finding the single points of failure before they find you, and building resilience you can afford. Running through all of it is one idea: the cheapest purchase, the fullest truck, the leanest local inventory can each quietly make the whole chain worse. The bullwhip effect proves it. By the end you can look at a struggling product-based supply chain, read the symptom, and reach for the right lever — and know when it's the wrong one.