LAHORE - An effective management of total supply chain is an essential tool to ensure cheaper quality products to end-users. It is not only the logistics but also collaboration and trust among the supply chain members that is the key to success. This was the upshot of the speeches and presentation give at a day-long seminar on Supply Chain Management jointly organized by the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), National Productivity Organisation (NPO) and University of Management and Technology (UMT) at the LCCI on Thursday. Supply Chain Management Expert Asher Ramish, LCCI Executive Committee Member Dr Shahid Raza and LCCI Secretary General Syed Mohammad Sqlain also spoke on the occasion. The speakers were of the view that there was a dire need to create awareness among the businessmen about the cutting-edge technologies to find out practical solutions to the problems encountered by them while dealing with end-to-end supply chain. They said that the Supply Chain Management is all about reducing the total cost of the entire trading process through focusing on speed and certainty of response to the market. Through an effective use of Supply Chain Management, the companies can compete better both at local level and at global scale. It has become a necessity especially for manufacturing industry when it comes to deliver products at a competitive cost and at a higher quality than their competitors. They said that the businesses now not only need to operate at a lower cost to compete, it must also develop its own core competencies to distinguish itself from competitors and stand out in the market. In creating the competitive edge, companies need to divert its resources to focus on what they do best and outsource the process and task that is not important to the overall objective of the company. They said that in order to create a competitive advantage, companies must look at the big picture of the whole process, and figuring out which process can be reduced and created. Product life cycles also can be improved through effective use of Supply Chain system. LCCI Executive Committee member Dr Shahid Raza said that the LCCI would continue to collaborate with various government and private sector organizations for creating awareness among its members about latest business-doing technologies in vogue in the developed countries. The LCCI Secretary General Syed Mohammd Sqlain, in his concluding remarks, stressed the need for the identification of bottlenecks in the way of smooth business doing practices in the country.