ABSTRACT
In 1980s, researchers and practitioners started to look for new strategies to improve organizational competitiveness, which led to the inception of supply chain management (SCM). SCM began to attract interest in the mid-1990s and since then the essence of the discipline is widely acclaimed and accepted. Today, in every corridor of industry, academia, and governance, the concepts and applications of supply chains and their management implications have been widely practiced. A supply chain can be de£ned as “the delivery of enhanced customer and economic value through synchronized management of the ¡ow of physical goods and associated information from source to consumption” (Jayaraman and Ross, 2003). Over the last three decades, SCM has spread its tentacles and grew to the status of an independent body of knowledge and a £eld of practice. A typical supply chain is composed of mainly three modules: inbound logistics, manufacturing operations, and outbound logistics. The £rst and last modules are respectively called “upstream” and “downstream” of the supply chain. An extended supply chain goes beyond these boundaries and tends to embrace the suppliers of suppliers on the upstream end and the entities of reverse logistics on the downstream end. At the beginning of the twenty-£rst century, companies have witnessed a period of change unparalleled in the history of the business world in terms of technological innovations, the globalization of markets, and more aggressive customer demands. The competitiveness in today’s marketplace depends immensely on the ability of a company to handle the challenges of reducing manufacturing cycle time, reducing delivery lead time, increasing customer service level, and improving product quality. In order to stay competitive and for continual survival in the market, £rms need to effectively handle ¡uctuations in an ever-changing market better than their competitors. This calls for building supply chains that are ¡exible and responsive enough to handle changing market and customer requirements.
