Informational challenges—absence, uncertainty, asymmetry—shape the working of markets and commerce in many developing countries. For developing country micro-enterprises, which form the bulk of all enterprises worldwide, these challenges shape the characteristics of their supply chains. They reduce the chances that business and trade will emerge. They keep supply chains localized and intermedia...

J and Graves (Jordan, W. C., S. C. Graves. 1995. Principles on the benefits of manufacturing process flexibility. Management Sci. 41(4) 577–594) initiated a stream of research on supply chain flexibility, which was furthered by Graves and Tomlin (Graves, S. C., B. T. Tomlin. 2003. Process flexibility in supply chains. Management Sci. 49(7) 907–919), that examined various structures for achievin...

Modern RFID-supported supply chains envision a seamless sharing of item-level data across multiple supply chain participants in the “Internet of Things”. However, many companies are reluctant to propagate large amounts of their track and trace information to others, as they fear the uncontrolled disclosure of vital business intelligence. Without built-in safeguards, such systems thus run the ri...

Evidence on the impact of amplification, or bullwhip, effects on supply chain performance has primarily been derived from studies in manufacturing industries. This paper reports on a case study from the telecommunication industry, aiming to analyze relevant root causes and associated counter-measures of the amplification phenomenon in service supply chains. Case findings confirm the occurrence ...

This paper reviews the opportunities available for food businesses to encourage consumers to eat healthier and more nutritious diets, to invest in more sustainable manufacturing and distribution systems and to develop procurement systems based on more sustainable forms of agriculture. The important factors in developing more sustainable supply chains are identified as the type of supply chain i...

The main purpose of this chapter is to present a possible alternative for optimization of supply chain management. The chapter discusses the virtual organization as an important tool for optimization of supply chain management. A simple model for discussing organization of supply chain is introduced, which serves as an important starting point for assessing the current organization of the suppl...

High volume production flows are modeled by nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations representing conservation laws. These models have Little’s law explicitly built into the formulation. Borrowing from concepts in gas dynamics and vehicular traffic models we derive several prototypical equations representing linear as well as reentrant factories. Multiple products, dispatch polices a...

Supply chains in industry have a very complex structure. The influence of many parameters is not known. Therefore the control of the material flow is rather difficult. In order to recognize these relationships between the parameters, initially very simple models have to be established. For this examination a linear supply chain with 4 stages will be designed. In all stages the stock is closed-l...

We analyze the sourcing decision of a buyer choosing between two supplier types: responsible suppliers are costly but adhere to strict social and environmental responsibility standards, while risky suppliers are less expensive but may experience responsibility violations. A segment of the consumer population, called socially conscious, is willing to pay a higher price for a product sourced from...