The College of Business at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln has established an undergraduate supply chain management major to educate students to become supply chain management professionals. Supply chain management (SCM) includes all the activities that must take place to get the right products and services into the right customer’s hands in the right quantity at the right time—from raw material extraction to consumer purchase.
The topics that SCM covers are diverse and include procurement, order fulfillment, inventory management, supplier relationship management, product development and commercialization, returns management, physical distribution and shipping, warehousing, and outsourcing. With the depth and breadth of issues that it encompasses, industries that use SCM tools and approaches include transportation, hospitals, government organizations, construction, processing, social services, electronics, facility design, manufacturing, and warehousing.