The bulk of materials management deals with the same sort of concepts as supply chain management, but the difference is that materials management deals with surplus material or material that is warehoused for future use. A materials management operation thus conducts a large amount of the acquisition of parts and material used by supply chain operations "down the line". Some studies in SCM indicate that a poorly organized materials management program can cripple supply efforts more so than inefficiencies in the supply chain itself.

Quality Control

Materials management also ensures that parts and materials used in the supply chain meet minimum requirements by performing quality control. While most of the writing and discussion about materials management is on acquisition and standards, much of the day to day work conducted in materials management deals with QA issues. Parts and material are tested, both before purchase orders are placed and during use, to ensure there are no short or long term issues that would disrupt the supply chain. ^[2]

Standards

The final component of materials management is standards compliance. There are standards that are followed in supply chain management that are critical to a supply chain's function. For example, a supply chain that uses |just-in-time or lean replenishment requires absolute perfection in the shipping of parts and material from purchasing agent to warehouse to place of destination. Systems reliant on vendor-managed inventories must have up-to-date computerized inventories and robust ordering systems for outlying vendors to place orders on. Materials management typically insures that the warehousing and shipping of such components as are needed follows the standards required to avoid problems. This component of materials management is the fastest changing part, due to recent innovations in SCM and in logistics in general, including outsourced management of warehousing, mobile computing, and real-time logistical inventories.