Supply chains are beginning to displace firms as the competitive entity in the global marketplace. Managed supply chains offer the promise of added value through proactive cooperative efforts among participating firms. However, as a strategic alliance, managed supply chains represent a form of social dilemma: supply chain alliances may fail because participating firms fear opportunistic behavio...

1.1 Overview A supply chain represents the flow of materials, information, and finance as they move through supply chain partners such as manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. The track & trace services in supply chains can help improve supply chain visibility and efficiency, and prevent counterfeiting and stealing of products thus enhance security. Track & trace ser...

The revenue management concept and techniques are applied to model the coordination of supply chain elements. The fundamental premise of this approach is synchronization of a group of business entities consist-ing of a manufacturer and multiple suppliers to achieve an optimal supply chain capacity plans. The output of the supply chain can be various products and thus it is measured in terms of ...

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...