The State of Practice in Supply-Chain Management: A Research Perspective

In this paper, 1 will describe examples of state-of-the-art practice in supply-chain management; e.g., vendor-managed inventory, quick response, and other contemporary systems, such as Wal-Mart's RetailLink. The perspective will be that of what I call the JDJB Portfolio; i.e., what Information (I), Decision-Making {D), Implementation (I), and Buffer (B) systems are employed in managing real-world supply chains. Most operations-research models consider only two components of this portfolio: the decision-making and the buffer systems. More specifically, most operations-research models involve selecting a decision-rule to minimize expected buffer (e.g., inventory-holding and backorder) cost given a fixed level of information. Implementation as a decision variable is typically ignored. However, in the real world, with changing information, communication, and implementation technologies, supplychain management can and should be viewed as changing the nature of the entire IDIB Portfolio. After interpreting current practice from the perspective of the IDIB Portfolio, I will forecast future practice using Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) as an example. I will describe the elements of CPFR, identify companies that are using lt, and the challenges they face in realizlng lts potential. Finally, I will identify research opportunities in CPFR, and, more generally, research opportunities involving the IDIB Portfolio.