The future trend on system-wide modelling in supply chain studies

Although supply chain (SC) has gained increasing attention in the last decade and numerous SC problems have been identified and solved, there is a lack of systematic approach to solve SC problems at a system level. SC can be viewed as a network of organisations including, but not restricted to, the suppliers (source of raw materials), manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and end customers. Each entity is able to process different tasks individually in order to satisfy the global goal of the network, which is usually the total cost or lead time of a set of products. If only inter-entity problems are solved, like inventory level, production planning, etc., the performance of the whole system is not guaranteed to be acceptable. The main objective of this paper is to review contemporary SC problems and the methodologies in solving them, and to suggest future research direction for solving supply chains problems. From the analysis of the review, it can be concluded that there is limited research to solve SC problems from a "system" point of view. In this connection, future direction in solving system-wide SC, and the potential difficulties, are discussed. This allows readers to gain insights in the future research direction in the area of supply chain management. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2004.link_to_subscribed_fulltex