literature analysis

Supply Chain Management Literature Review

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:29:00 +0000

It’s not that there are no articles on supply chain risk management anymore. But after writing on current research in the last weeks (like the one on system failure here) I have been wondering more about the foundations of supply chain management in general. So I decided to review an article today on general supply chain management research, in this case a literature review by Sachan and Datta (2005).
The complete article can be found here.

Analysis

The analysis is pretty straight forward, Sachan and Datta start with showing the different research designs used: empirical/descriptive and quantitative/qualitative. In supply chain management the research methods range from surveys, interviews and case studies, to more quantitative approaches like mathematical modeling or simulation. Using these categories the authors reviewed 440 supply chain management articles from 1999 to 2003.

Authors’ Conclusions

The authors themselves draw the following conclusions from the data at hand:
Conclusion 1:

If academicians today do not expand the approaches to research, managers will continue to perceive them as irrelevant academicians, which address fictitious problems and are not interested in the real world.

Conclusion 2:

Simulation is often performed to check for validity of the models developed in an paper, or to examine the efficiency of heuristics, or to assess model solution times.

Conclusion 3:

It is remarkable that not more papers have an inter-organizational level (dyad, chain and network) of analysis despite the increasing attention toward these level had started at the beginning of the 1980s.

Furthermore they identify the following gaps in the research:

Theories of other discipline are applied in very few papers
Secondary data sources are used in many papers, but not in an innovative way
The research at inter-organizational level is very less.

Conclusion

There are two major conclusions drawn in the article: Academicians make themselves irrelevant, because they only use a specific set of methods, to solve problems which are not rooted within business problems.
Secondly, only few papers focus on a supply chain network, most of them only view single relationships between one or two elements of the chain, ignoring most network effects.

The conclusions drawn are both very intriguing, but they are really missing some more explanations. So, for example, why are they sure that the choice of methods is the reason for the great gap between research and business?
Anyone reading papers on supply chain management realized the gap between the title of the field and much of the research done there. Still, it would be more interesting to know why most research is only done on sub systems.

Reference:

Sachan, A., & Datta, S. (2005). Review of supply chain management and logistics research International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 35 (9), 664-705 DOI: 10.1108/09600030510632032

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supply chain management

literature analysis

Analysis of Logistics Strategies from 1990 to 2008

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Do supply chain strategies evolve over time? Are there the same strategic options nowadays compared to 20 years ago?
Since at least the meaning of the term logistics has evolved during the last 20 years, especially due to the emergence of supply chain management, logistics and supply chain management are used interchangeable in this article.

In 1987 Bowersox and Daugherty created a logistics strategy framework, concluding that there are basically three SC strategies:

Process Strategy
management of the traditional logistics activities with a primary goal of controlling costs
Market Strategy
management of selected traditional logistics activities across business units with the goal of reducing complexity faced by customers
Information Strategy
management as a system, with the goal of achieving inter-organizational coordination and collaboration through the channel.

Hypothesis

Building on this framework McGinnis, Kohn, Spillan (2010) executed and analyzed four surveys from the years 1990, 1994, 1999, 2008 with the above mentioned research questions in mind. The following hypothesis were designed:

Importance of Bowersox framework remained constant
Dependent variables (statistical data on the survey participants like: logistics coordination effectiveness, customer service commitment and competitiveness) remained constant
Within a logistics strategy, process strategy, market strategy, and information strategy will be of equal importance.

Results

First, the results show, that the dependent variables and the perception of the strategies did not change too much to make a comparison between the studies impossible.
To analyze the results further the authors clustered the respondents into three strategy clusters (intense, intermediate and passive cluster), depending on their propensity for the mentioned strategies. Here is what they found:

Intense Logistics Strategy increased
That means that either the importance of logistics strategy in U.S. manufacturing firms increased in importance or the firms were more intensely managed overall, including logistics
Relative Importance
Process strategy (cost control) is generally more important than market strategy (reducing complexity faced by customers), and that both are more important than information strategy (inter-organizational cooperation and collaboration).

The authors conclude that the Bowersox and Daugherty (1987) typology still provides an excellent framework and that strategy is more stable over time than expected. The primary focus of an intense supply chain strategy is cost efficiency and complexity reduction; furthermore it appears that cost efficiency and reduced customer complexity are facilitated by the information strategy in the intense logistics cluster.

Conclusion

I think this kind of historical analysis is much to seldom in current research. In the popular reporting very often the hypothesis is made: This topic has experienced growing attention / relevance / … But has the world really become eg. more dangerous haven’t there always been violent attacks on people and property? I think McGinnis et al. provide a great basis for this kind of discussion. The answer is: Yes, there have been to the logistics strategies used by companies in the last 20 years, but not so much though. Of course this does not make a great headline like…

Reference:

McGinnis, M.A, Kohn, J.W., & Spillan, J.E. (2010). A Longitudinal Study of Logistics Strategy: 1990-2008 Journal of Business Logistics, 31 (1), 217-235

Bowersox, D.J., & Daugherty, P.J. (1987). Emerging Patterns of Logistical Organization Journal of Business Logistics, 8 (1), 46-60

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Research agenda for SCRM

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 14 May 2010 15:20:00 +0000

Even though supply chain risk has been analyzed in the literature for some time (eg. the Newsvendor / Newsboy problem, with the only uncertainty being demand). Nevertheless there are still many gaps (or opportunities) within this field.

In 2007 Khan and Burnes created a research agenda for the future and most of the topics covered still can be viewed as open.

Major Issues

The authors identify two major shortcomings of the current literature.

1) Locate itself within the wider literature on the theory of risk and the practice of risk management

2) Establish robust and well-grounded models of supply chain risk management, which incorporate risk management tools and techniques from other disciplines of research

Risk

Research on risk has its roots in the first applications of probabilities with gambling in the 17th century, in the 1960th the focus within the supply chain field was on risk and purchasing. Khan and Burnes identified the following components of risk from literature:

Definition
risk is defined by a future outcome and its probability
Chance and Risk
Many authors emphasize the negative side of risk
Risk and Uncertainty
Risk as something measurable, uncertainty lacks the quantifiability either of the outcome, the probability or both
Subjective or Objective
Can all risks be quantified or are there qualitative risks as well?
Managing Risk
defining the risk management process as the making and implementing of decisions concerning risks based on risk estimation and risk evaluation

Disruptions

The negative effects of supply chain disruptions are already supported by several studies. Disruptions lead to declining stock prices, negative effects on the organization as a whole and loss of reputation, to name a few. Furthermore it seams, that the economic, political and social developments over the past decade have increased the risk of SC disruptions, since the chains are getting longer and more complex. On the other hand customer expectations for quality, price and response times are increasing.

Integration of the supply chain activities therefore plays a more important role.

Reference:

Khan, O., & Burnes, B. (2007). Risk and supply chain management: creating a research agenda The International Journal of Logistics Management, 18 (2), 197-216 DOI: 10.1108/09574090710816931

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literature analysis

Journal Ranking - Supply Chain Risk Management

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:29:00 +0000

The journals with relevant articles for Supply Chain Risk Management can be very diverse. First one would think about which fields and respective journals are relevant and where can one expect to find articles concerning supply chain risks?

The first thought is of course on Logistics and Supply Chain Management. There is one quite current article about journal ranking: Menachof et al. (2009): “An analysis of the value of supply chain management periodicals” published in the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. It is a study based on an survey with more than 100 responses to an online questionnaire.

A citation-based analysis was rejected mainly due to its incompleteness and the tendency to evaluate the impact of the periodical rather than the quality of the articles. Furthermore the authors suggest, that the perception of journals could be changing due to the increasing usage of online resources for publishing.

Overall 87 named papers were included within the survey (others could be named by the participants). Targets for the questions were educators at four-year colleges and universities. The feedback came mainly from anglo-saxon with feedback of only three german speaking countries.

Results were found in three categories: Use of periodicals in research, teaching and outreach.

Interesting is the fact, that more and more high value journals for SCM are from other fields like Marketing (eg. M. Christopher at Cranfield has done some research there) and OM/OR.

For me the research part is most interesting. There the JBL and IJPDLM rank highest in this survey.

The article also examines what search engines are used most for research (EBSCO Host BSP and ProQuest rank highest there), but this also brings me to further resources for journals and journal rankings, since there are further more.

One nice resource I stumbled upon was blog articles tagged eg. on wordpress.com. Other sites I found include:

http://www.journal-ranking.com/ranking/web/index.html

http://eigenfactor.org/

https://interorganisational.org/2008/08/27/scm-journal-ranking/

But these are all sources for SCM papers. Nothing what focusses on supply chain risk management.

So what other interesting sources for supply chain risks can there be? Eg. military research is one stream which is not mentioned in the article reviewed above.

The military is especially interested in defending the countries critical infrastructure, one part of it can be some supply chains. Of course there are different goals between military and businesses in the supply chain risk management view, but the methodology employed could be similar.

Reference:

Menachof, D., Gibson, B., Hanna, J., & Whiteing, A. (2009). An analysis of the value of supply chain management periodicals International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 39 (2), 145-165 DOI: 10.1108/09600030910942403

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