When the first edition of this book was published in 1992, supply chain management as an idea was still in its infancy and relatively few companies had made it a priority. The same was true for logistics management, although its precursor, distribution management, was increasingly being recognised as important both in terms of cost and for its potential impact on sales. In the intervening yea…
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the increasingly important question of supply chain design for global operations. With the rise of off-shore sourcing and the simultaneous need for improved responsiveness to customer demand, the choice of supply chain strategy is critical. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws its conclusions from case-based research supported b…
Purpose – An underlying principle of supply chain management is to establish control of the end-to-end process in order to create a seamless flow of goods. The basic idea is that variability is detrimental to performance as it causes cost in the form of stock-outs, poor capacity utilisation, and costly buffers. This paper questions this approach and argues that in the light of increasing turb…