Within the supply chain of a company, management can face several challenges. Producing, shipping, and storing inventory can cause many issues when it comes to a fast-changing market with a constant demand for different products. In the fashion industry for instance, trends are always changing or being modified in some way. In this case, management faces the challenge of consistently changing their production methods to meet demand, as well as incurring the costs of shipping to where the demand is located, and of course distributing the goods on a timely basis without inventory accumulating excessively.
Some companies have managed to shorten their supply chain by providing “buy direct” options. This essentially eliminates the middle-man, selling products to consumers directly from the manufacturing location as opposed to spending more on sending items to retail stores or warehouses where they are then distributed. In this way, consumers are obtaining their purchases from a less lengthy chain of command, and manufacturers are cutting down on any extra expenses that would otherwise be incurred. Dell and Amazon are prime examples of companies who employ this idea, and given their past success, one may argue that improvements to their supply chain efficiency was a key factor.