“Bullwhip” describes the general tendency for small changes in end‐customer demand to be amplified within a production‐distribution system. A 10 per cent increase in sales to end‐customers can precipitate a 40 per cent upswing in production and subsequent downswing (as excess stocks...

Purpose: An emerging theme in the practitioner literature suggests that the supply chain of the future – enabled especially by developments in ICT – will be autonomous and have predictive capabilities, bringing significant efficiency gains in an increasingly complex and uncertain...

Purpose – Global sourcing can bring many benefits to organisations, but it can also expose them to a number of risks. The purpose of this study is to understand how managers assess global sourcing risks across the entire supply chain and what actions they take to mitigate those risks....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the alignment between product design and the supply chain and to identify how this alignment impacts on a firm's supply chain responsiveness and resilience. Design/methodology/approach – An in‐depth case study methodology was adopted to...

Purpose – Sustainability and the search for solutions that are both efficient and ecologically sound (eco-efficient) have become topics of great interest. However, companies seeking to develop supply chain solutions that are eco-efficient are often hampered by their ability to control the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the impact of the original work and provide an updated model to reflect the changing environment for supply chains. In 2000, a migratory model for supply chain evolution was proposed. Design/methodology/approach – The authors start by...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of procurement in identifying and managing the intra- and inter-organisational issues which impact supply chain resilience. Achieving resilience along the supply chain in today’s turbulent business environment requires efforts...