Industrial supply-chain processes are primarily influenced by products and process infrastructure. In practice, a finite number of process variants exist and they differ on procedure level. Also known as best practices processes, these processes are represented below by way of the product-independent 'customer and market supply' process:

Product basic data and the bill of materials of a product are defined by colleagues in the design department. Work scheduling uses production bill of materials and task lists to set out the various manufacturing stages of a product. A sales or planning department defines whether the product is made-to-stock or merely manufactured once concrete sales orders are received. Process parameters (such as batch sizes, scheduling details, procurement guidelines, and information on checks) have to be defined for all materials in the bill of materials. The process infrastructure (operating facilities and processing times, for example) is used to define the processes and parameters. The product can then be calculated once all data has been fed in, before the market price is fixed by the sales department.

Bottom line:
The properties of individual products determine the detailed characteristics of the process elements by the way in which they interact. They define how products are planned, sold, manufactured, checked, stored, and shipped. Make-to-stock production, for example, differs from make-to-order final assembly in the way that products are planned and orders are handled.

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