Purpose Supply chains evolve and change in size, shape and configuration, and in how they are coordinated, controlled and managed. Some supply chains are mature and relatively unchanging. Some are subject to significant change. New supply chains may emerge and evolve for a variety of reasons....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the context affects successful use of advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems in sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes, and how individual, technological, and organizational (ITO) dimensions affect this procedure....

Purpose – Research on business-to-business (B2B) pricing has been mainly focussed on the supplier’s pricing process, thus adopting traditionally an internal perspective and perceiving pricing as a profit distribution parameter rather than an opportunity for collaboration with customers....

Purpose The customer order decoupling point (CODP) concept addresses the issue of customer engagement in the manufacturing process. This has traditionally been applied to material flows, but has more recently been applied to engineering activities. This later subject becomes of particular...

Managing inventory levels in the aggregate is a common concern of senior management. A generalized formula (turnover curve) developed in previous research that mimics practical inventory control is used to audit inventory control performance of inventories in the aggregate and at multiple...

In an era of global sourcing, the firm’s success often hinges on the most appropriate selection of its suppliers. Supplier selection is sometimes very complicated, owing to a variety of uncontrollable and unpredictable factors which affect the decision. Describes a multiple attribute utility...

Current studies indicate that buyers can improve lead‐time performance and reduce total inventory‐system costs by splitting orders between two suppliers. These studies, however, treat transportation only implicitly as an element of the cost of placing an order. This is an important...

The concepts of supply‐chain design and management have come to the fore, owing to the ever‐increasing complexity of the systems driving buyer‐supplier relations in both industrial and consumer‐based markets. The unprecedented levels of supply‐chain management complexity are partly...

The development of enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages has created an opportunity to re‐engineer supply chains within and beyond the organizational scope. Most notably, SAP R/3 has been widely implemented to create value‐oriented supply chains that enable a high level of integration,...

Discusses a recent practical experience of reconfiguring a logistics system in Europe. Begins by outlining the changing market boundaries and asserts that, whilst the trend is towards global manufacturing and a simplification of the supply chain and standardization of products, conflicts are...