The Bee Hive

SCOR is a cross-industry standard for supply chain management and has been developed and endorsed by the Supply-Chain Council (SCC), an independent not-for-profit corporation. The SCC was organized in 1996 by Pittiglio Radin Todd & McGrath (PRTM) and AMR Research, and initially included 69 voluntary member companies. Council membership is now open to all companies and organizations interested in advancing supply chain management practices and technologies.

SCOR is based on five distinct management processes: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, and Return. Please refer to Figure 1 for an illustration of SCOR and a brief overview of each management process.

• Plan - Processes that balance aggregate demand and supply to develop a course of action which best meets sourcing, production, and delivery requirements.
• Source - Processes that procure goods and services to meet planned or actual demand.
• Make - Processes that transform product to a finished state to meet planned or actual demand.
• Deliver - Processes that provide finished goods and services to meet planned or actual demand, typically including order management, transportation management, and distribution management.
• Return - Processes associated with returning or receiving returned products for any reason. These processes extend into post-delivery customer support.

With all reference models, there is a specific scope that the model addresses. The SCOR model is no different. The SCOR model focuses on the following:

• All customer interactions, from order entry through paid invoice
• All product (physical material and service) transactions, from your supplier’s supplier to your customer’s customer, including equipment, supplies, spare parts, bulk product, software, etc.
• All market interactions, from the understanding of aggregate demand to the fulfillment of each order

The SCOR model does not attempt to describe every business process or activity. Relationships between these processes can be made to the SCOR and some have been noted within the model. Other key assumptions addressed by SCOR include: training, quality, information technology, and administration (not Supply Chain Management (SCM)). These areas are not explicitly addressed in the model but rather assumed to be a fundamental supporting process throughout the model.

The SCOR model provides three-levels of process detail. Each level of detail assists a company in defining scope (Level 1), configuration or type of supply chain (Level 2), process element details, including performance attributes (Level 3). Below level 3, companies decompose process elements and start implementing specific supply chain management practices. It is at this stage that companies define practices to achieve a competitive advantage, and adapt to changing business conditions. Please refer to Figure 2 for an overview of the levels of process detail.

SCOR is a process reference model designed for effective communication among supply-chain partners. As an industry standard it also facilitates inter and intra supply chain collaboration, horizontal process integration, by explaining the relationships between processes (i.e., Plan-Source, Plan-Make, etc.). It also can be used as a data input to completing an analysis of configuration alternatives (e.g., Level 2) such as: Make-to-Stock or Make-To-Order. SCOR is used to describe, measure, and evaluate supply chains in support of strategic planning and continuous improvement.

Further information regarding the Council and SCOR can be found at www.supply-chain.org.