Supply chain management refers to A. how the firm compensates the employees who work on the firm's internal stages of production. B. the decisions around which stages of production to handle internally and which to buy from others. C. the contracts put in place to manage a firm's suppliers. D. the 19th century practice of having barges move downstream with the flow of the river.

Supply chain management is fundamentally concerning with the management of a firm's reception of inputs in order to produce output, and with a firm's delivery of those outputs to the final customer.

For example, some firms can have the capability to supply their own raw materials internally, transform them into a finished product, and send the products to the customer.

Other firms have more complicated supply chains: they may buy the raw materials, produce a part of the good in a place, another part in another place, and hire another company to make the deliveries.