What's the difference between the Supply Chain and the Value Chain?

Question

Am I right in thinking that an optimised supply chain becomes a value chain?

Answer 1

The terms are a bit 'generic' (see definitions), however these are two different ways to look at essentially the same thing ..

So in general I would say 'no'.

If you take the Supply Chain focus, optimisation might actually COST you money = for example, you might decide to service the customer faster by building a new warehouse so you can hold more stock thus allowing immediate delivery ..

However the Value Chain puts the focus on where the VALUE is added to the product .. so here you might decide to close the warehouse (no added value) and adopt a 'build to order' approach ..