Purchasing is the formal process of buying goods and services.
Inventory management is primarily concerned with specifying the shape and percentage of stocked goods to reduce costs and improve sales.
The purpose of scheduling is to minimize production time and costs.
Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic.
Outsourcing is the contracting of an existing business process to an external, independent organization.
Logistics plans, implements, and controls the forward and reverse flow and storage of goods between the point of origin and consumption.
Quality control is a process that evaluates output against a standard and takes corrective action when output doesn't meet that standard.
Investment in information technology has made supply chains faster, cheaper, and more reliable.