This paper proposes an agent-based simulation model to study how competition and collaboration affect supply chains by looking at the problem at a market level. A theory-driven approach is applied to the modelling. The model reflects customers, manufacturers, and suppliers competing and collaborating in a supply chain strategic space. Preliminary results show that the market structure is determ...

Challenges to effective Supply Chain Management Today’s supply chains operate in an era of a ‘new normal,’ characterized by unprecedented volatility, uncertainty and complexity. These are caused by uncertainty in macroeconomic, geo-political, and climatic conditions, as well as growth in product and service personalization levels. These factors contribute to the inability to anticipate the effe...

The mapping and analysis of supply chains is a technique increasingly used to address problems in the food system. Yet such supply chain management has not yet been applied as a means of encouraging healthier diets. Moreover, most policies recommended to promote healthy eating focus on the consumer end of the chain. This article proposes a consumption-oriented food supply chain analysis to iden...

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...