The choices made concerning these drivers and related operational processes determine the
responsiveness and efficiency of the supply chain. So let us look at the operational processes that
make use of inventory, transportation, facilities and information. As we saw before, the traditional
view on logistics management in a supply chain is the ‘cycle view’. In this view, chain processes
in a supply chain are divided into a series of cycles, each performed at the interface between
two successive stages of a supply chain (see Figure 2). A cycle view of the supply chain clearly
defines the business processes and activities involved and the owners of each process and relative
roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, because of inventory being held between the cycles, the
main processes are decoupled to a certain extent. This implies that each process can function
independently and is not hindered by ‘problems’ in other processes. In other words, each actor
in the supply chain manages its own processes without coordination with chain partners. This
opposes the ‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) philosophy of inventory management, which states among other
things that the decoupling of activities by inventories should be eliminated, since it hinders supply
chain visibility and supports the sub-optimization of the supply chain.