Strategic Supply Chain Mapping Approaches

Visualizing, tracking, and managing supply chains all become more complicated as firms pursue outsourcing strategies and as firms’supply and delivery systems become increasingly global. The authors suggest that not only is there a need to visualize the supply chain, there needs to be a well-established process for building the map so that knowledge is easily transferable and exchangeable among managers and organizations as appropriate. Further, the map should link to the strategic planning process of the firm to facilitate evaluation of supply chain membership and structure. Before an effective supply chain mapping process can be developed, it is important to understand the nature of maps, the importance of supply chain mapping, the role of supply chain mapping in strategy, and characteristics of supply chain maps. The latter will be the focus of this paper.