The concept of supply chain was proposed in the 1980s. In 1985, American scholar Michael Porter proposed the concept of value chain in his book “Competitive Advantage”. The value chain divides enterprise operations into multiple aspects, including internal logistics, production operations, external logistics, marketing and sales, services, procurement management, technology development human resources management, infrastructure management, etc. In 1992, John K. Shank and Vijay Govindarajan proposed that the value chain should cover “the entire process from the initial supplier providing the required raw materials to the final delivery of the product to the user”. In 1996, Bernd Scholz-Reiter first proposed the definition of supply chain. He believed that the supply chain is a physical network through which products and services are delivered to a specific customer market.
The National Standard of the People’s Republic of China: Logistics Terminology (GB/T18354-2006) defines the supply chain as a network-like organization jointly established by upstream and downstream enterprises in the process of production and circulation in order to deliver products or services to end users.
The supply chain includes business flow, information flow, logistics flow and capital flow. From raw materials to intermediate products, final products, to distribution channels, retail terminals, and finally to consumers, the overall network connection function is called the supply chain.
Business flow is a transaction process of materials, and the transfer of commodity ownership occurs through business flow activities. Business flow is the starting point of information flow, logistics flow and capital flow.
Information flow is the flow of information between suppliers and enterprises, including supply and demand information and management information on the supply chain. It is continuously generated with the operation of logistics, including product demand, order delivery, delivery status and inventory information.
Logistics is the whole process of goods circulation and the core link of the supply chain. The direction of this process is from raw material suppliers to manufacturers, channel merchants and logistics companies, and finally to end consumers.
Capital flow refers to the circulation of money. The direction of this process is from end consumers to channel merchants and logistics companies, manufacturers, and finally to raw material suppliers.
Supply chain management refers to the planning, organization, coordination and control of all activities involved in the supply chain. Its purpose is to improve the speed and certainty of all related processes by optimizing processes, and improve the operational efficiency and benefits of the organization. Specifically, it includes order processing, raw material storage, production planning, inventory design, cargo transportation and after-sales service.
The supply chain of cross-border e-commerce is significantly different from that of domestic e-commerce. Cross-border e-commerce is subject to the supervision of customs, inspection and quarantine departments of importing and exporting countries (regions), and the supply chain chain from source of goods, warehousing, logistics, customs clearance to consumer terminals is longer. It is difficult for domestic platforms and merchants to fully control the cross-border supply chain. Supply chain is a problem that all cross-border e-commerce companies must face, and the importance of supply chain management system in cross-border e-commerce transactions is particularly prominent.
The entire process of the supply chain of domestic e-commerce from commodity production to distribution is basically completed domestically, and does not involve customs, foreign exchange and other related issues. With the improvement of the national economic level, more and more people are willing to shop through the Internet, which has also promoted the rapid development of my country’s logistics industry. Compared with foreign logistics companies, my country’s logistics companies started late and have backward infrastructure, high transportation and inventory costs, and low professional operation levels.