Today in this dynamic business world with a big competition every business strives to be better and to surpass others (Hewitt, 1994). The modern business is a game in which everyone tries to beat the others with unexpected move or even two to be forward. In the recent years the topic about the effective value chain management and its implementation on the market is extremely discussed. I believe that it should be targeted towards the market and in this paper I would like to present an explanation what is value chain, how came the need for it and some examples which show that it is an important tool for the market.
Background.
First I would like to start with a brief explanation of what is supply chain management (SC). This concept represents management and improvement of the entire product life cycle from conception to consumption (Blanchard, p.3). The most accurate definition is that "Supply chain management integrates supply and demand management within and across companies" (Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals). SC was initially aimed at materials planning, technology, logistics and others. In recent years, however, there is a drastic change in the market - such as the need to use integrated systems such as ERP. The contribution of information and communication technologies is very large on strategies and tactics in the business. Then comes the value chain as necessity. According to Al-Mudimigh et al. (2004, p. 311) "The creation of value is managed through what has been referred to as the supply chain, value chain of customer chain, each of which refers to a series of integrated, dependent process through which specifications are transformed to finished deliverables ". The term is created by Porter (1985, p. 35) as a "set of activities that are performed to design, produce and market, deliver and support its product". The keywords for value chain are a value and volume of the product or service.
