Abstract
The mission of supply chain management is to have processes integrated between the functions of the firm. Consequently, procurement, production, distribution, and marketing are members of a network. The vision of the supply chain management is to deliver value to customers. Moreover, the performance objectives are quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost objectives. The objective of the report is to analyse the strategies a company needs to reach the objectives required at the inbound level to remain competitive. At first, to delimit boundaries, definitions of the main concepts are given, then several strategies are deeply analysed to manage to link procurement, sources, suppliers and production strategies. The definition of supply chain management has been evolving these past years partly because of an important transition from the concept of logistics to the one of supply chain management. According to Christopher (2005, p.5), supply chain management is "the management of upstream and downstream relationships with suppliers and customers to deliver superior customer value at less cost to the supply chain as a whole" (italics used by Christopher).
