Supply Chain Management: Model Design and Evaluation

In today’s global market, a holistic view of the supply chain management becomes a key factor for the successful business. Supply chain management addresses the issues of cross-functional integration and inter-organizational functions ranging from the ordering and receipt of raw materials throughout the manufacturing processes, to the distribution and delivery of products to the customer. Its application enables organizations to achieve quality products, better customer service and lower inventory cost. In order to achieve high performance, supply chain functions must operate in an integrated and coordinated manner. Several challenging problems associated with integrated supply chain design are: (1) how to model and coordinate the supply chain business processes, specifically in the area of supply chain workflows; (2) how to analyze the performance of an integrated supply chain network so that optimization techniques can be employed to improve customer service and reduce inventory cost; and (3) how to evaluate dynamic supply chain networks and obtain a comprehensive understanding of decision-making issues related to supply network configurations.