Types of Supply Chains

As a good book with current research on supply chain management I often recommend Supply Chain Management and Advanced Planning: Concepts, Models, Software, and Case Studies, edited by Stadtler and Kilger. In this review I refer to chapter 3 of that book, which goes into the details of different types of supply chains.

The understanding of the specific types of supply chains is especially useful from a viewpoint where multiple supply chains are analyzed. This could be within a larger company with several different supply chains or a consultant or researcher who wants to tailer strategies to reduce risks for a specific type of supply chain network.

Structure

The chapter is conceptual in nature and prescribes supply chain attributes which may be functional or structural in nature. As the last part a consumer goods and a computer assembly supply chain from a previous case study are characterized according to that scheme.

Functional attributes

The functional attributes fall into four categories: procurement type, production type, distribution type and sales type (figure 1).

Figure 1: Supply Chain Typology: Functional Attributes (Meyr, Stadtler, 2008)

Structural attributes

The structural attributes define the topography of the supply chain and the integration and coordination. They are summarized in figure 2.

Figure 2: Supply Chain Typology: Structural Attributes (Meyr, Stadtler, 2008)

Case: consumer goods

Using the data from a case study the authors then select the parameters of a typical supply chain in the consumer goods industry. Figure 3 shows the supply chain’s distribution network, starting with the factories, the central and regional warehouses and the trans-shipment points (CW, RW, TP) and ending with the retailers.

Figure 3: Case Study: Consumer Goods (Meyr, Stadtler, 2008)

From the case study the authors select the following functional and structural attributes of a typical consumer goods supply chain (figure 4).

Figure 4: Case Study: Consumer Goods Supply Chain (Meyr, Stadtler, 2008)

Case: computer assembly

Another case study unravels the typical properties of a supply chain for computer assembly (figure 5).

Figure 5: Case Study: Computer Assembly (Meyr, Stadtler, 2008)

Conclusion

Analyzing the strategic properties of supply chains is also quite important to my own research as well, and I find the selection of the different attributes in this chapter quite intriguing, even though some of them might be too far on the operational level.

The application of such a framework on the other hand requires a lot of care, since the parameters have to be analyzed and applied equally for each supply chain. Especially in the case of a generalization, where a “typical” case should be described, it is, in my point of view, necessary that the foundation of these common denominators are clearly described, a feature which is missing in the chapter completely.

I also doubt that it is possible to deduce the properties of an average supply chain from a singular case study at all. So one has to ask if the right method has been chosen for this chapter.

Nonetheless, overall I do think the categories which have been suggested can be very useful to analyze and differentiate supply chain types.