Articles

For researchers and practitioners alike it is important to differentiate supply chain strategies.

Introduction
Not only Fisher (1997) showed, that there is no one-fits-all supply chain. But what are the criteria for should be used for supply chain segmentation?
Fisher focusses on on the product only, and he concludes, that a standard/functional product should be processed by a lean supply chain and innovative products by agile supply chains.

The bullwhip effect in supply chains has been around for some time now. The term "bullwhip effect" originated at Procter & Gamble, and is defined as: demand amplification across echelons within a supply chain. This describes the effect that end customer demand may be very static (as for "Pampers" by Procter & Gamble), but the demand experienced by the manufacturer or supplier shows amplified demand variations. (Fransoo and Wouters (2000))

Causes of the Bullwhip Effect
Lee et al. (1997) first analyzed the causes of the bullwhip effect:

• Demand forecast updating
  Demand forecast usually are based on the orders of the preceding echelon and not on the actual customer demand
• Order batching
  Orders are usually aggregated to batches to save cost.
• Price fluctuations
  Promotions and other effects can lead to price fluctuations of the product. When the price is perceived to be lower, orders go up and vis-versa.
• Rationing and shortage gaming
  For some products (eg. new iPhone) which may be short in supply, game theory suggests that it might be rational to order more than actually needed, since the number of delivered products usually is a percentage of the number of products ordered.

The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model has been developed by the Supply Chain Council to provide a best-practice framework for supply chain management practices and processes with the goal to increase performance.

SCOR
The SCOR model consists of five major process categories: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver and Return
Starting from that best practice processes are defined up to level three.

Nowadays green logistics is an often heard buzz-word, but already eleven years ago Beamon published an article about the challenges with creating Green Supply Chains.

Traditional vs. Extended Supply Chain
A traditional supply chain has been mostly a one-way street. The issues analyzed were eg. the number of echelons, buyer-supplier relationships and inventory levels.
As a basis the extended supply chain has to consider at least the recycling / re-use and remanufacturing processes to be complete. More important though the strategy of the company has to be adjusted to include environmental aspects as waste, resource / energy use and pollution as well.

Disruptions are a fact of life not only since the Supply Chain literature gained awareness of it. So some institutions in fact specialized on handling disruptions as their core competency.
The article "Responding to Disruptions in the Supply Network - from Dormant to Action" tries to transfer the knowledge and best practices present at the military and humanitarian organizations to Supply Chain Management.

Methodology
The authors (Kovács and Tatham) are using case research and a resource based view to find common patterns in military and humanitarian practices to efficiently and effectively act on disruptions.