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Research - This Week in Supply Chain Management (32 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:45:36 +0000

Today the focus is all on the research.

Research

And a lot of new research came out this week.

“When Supply-Chain Disruptions Matter” was published by Ananth Raman of the Harvard Business School. (HBS Working Knowledge)

Supply-chain disruptions have a material effect on company value, but this impact can vary considerably. Thus, it is important for managers and investors to recognize the types of disruptions and the organizational factors that lead to the worst outcomes. Prior research remains unsettled as to whether improvements to firm operational efficiency aggravate or alleviate the impact of disruptions. Improved operational efficiency may leave firms more exposed when a disruption occurs, or it may improve firms’ agility and allow them to respond more effectively to a disruption. We hypothesize that the impact of improved operational efficiency depends on whether the disruption is due to factors that are internal versus external to the firm and its supply chain. We use a sample of over 500 disruptions collected from company press releases and find empirical evidence that a higher rate of improvement in operating performance aggravates the impact of internal disruptions but not external disruptions. By taking advantage of an exogenous policy shock regarding corporate disclosure rules, we also find that managers show systematic bias in the disruptions they choose to announce, and we control for this effect in our model specifications.

Also have a look at a new PhD dissertation by Leah J. Bovell “Joint Resolution of Supply Chain Risks: The Role of Risk Characteristics and Problem Solving Approach”. (Georgia State University)

The purpose of this study is to examine the disruption risk resolution process in supply chains; specifically, to assess how risk attributes impact the approach firms select to resolve risks and the associated final outcomes.
We propose that high magnitude risks are positively associated with mutually beneficial problem resolution; on the other hand, low likelihood risks have the opposite effect, they are negatively associated with mutually beneficial resolution. Our conceptual contribution lies in our articulation of the mechanisms though which risk magnitude and risk likelihood impact mutual problem resolution. We posit that high magnitude risks and low likelihood (uncommon) risks mobilize the social network of actors, triggering vigilant monitoring for risks, communication among actors and across firm boundaries, and resource sharing and coordination which facilitate collaborative problem solving and mutual resolutions. These mobilization mechanisms help supply chain partners to overcome the challenges of complexity and allow for information and resource flows among actors and between firms.
Our statistical analysis demonstrates that the impact of risk attributes on mutual problem solutions is fully mediated by timely problem identification and collaborative problem solving.
Accenture has published a white paper on “Managing Supply Chain Risk Better”. (Accenture)

Enjoy your weekend.

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Risks at Renault - This Week in Supply Chain Management (31 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 09:46:04 +0000

The kayak tour last weekend was great. We had good weather and a lot of fun. Even though our boat lost in every speed competition.
Afterwards we spent a night in Berlin, where I had the chance to eat dim sum (chinese dumplings) again at Yumcha. They remind me a lot of my semester in Hong Kong. Especially the Siu Mai.

Research

This week I found a new article on risk management in the chemical supply chain using agent-based modeling. (ScienceDirect)

In today’s global and competitive markets, managing supply chain disruptions is a key factor in the success of any business. Disruption management, however, can be a challenging issue as disruptions can occur for a wide variety of reasons and the approaches to handle these risks are also ample. Moreover, evaluating the disruption impact and possible treatments is not a trivial task for a complex supply chain with many actors and different types of interactions. This calls for appropriate modeling and simulation frameworks. This paper presents a simulation-based risk analysis approach using an agent-based model and its application for a specific case of a lube oil supply chain.

Article

Fox Business reports on potential risks in the supply chain of the french car maker Renault (Fox Business)

Enjoy your weekend!

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Researchers’ Perspectives on Supply Chain Risk Management

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:36:48 +0000

The article on review today serves two distinct needs, by summarizing the current (2012) state of supply chain risk management.
The title of the article implies, that this is only a summary relevant for researchers. But this is not the case: of course there is also a short summary of current research and supply chain risk management, but a major part consists of two focus groups with practitioners and researchers, to define the current gaps in supply chain risk management.

The full length article can be found here.

Objective and methodology

There is a huge diversity in the topics, opinions, and research methodologies in the field of supply chain risk management. This is only natural, since research in supply chain risk management is still in a very early stage.

However it helps, once every couple of years, to summarize the current state-of-the-art and to categorize the most influential thoughts. These summaries help to focus research efforts and guide them within predefined bounds.

The goal of the authors is to examine the diversity in scope and research tools. For this the authors use three steps:

carry out direct observations of the researchers’ output (literature analysis);
gather evidence through surveys of focus groups of researchers aided by open- ended questionnaires; and
seek confirmation and additional information through a formal survey of a large group of researchers.

Results: diversity in scope and research tools

Figure 1 summarizes some of the most often used definitions for supply chain risk. The listing shows that there is still a large variety in definitions of risk.

Figure 1: Literature: Research Definitions for Supply Chain Risk (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

Figure 2 highlights different research methodologies which are employed in literature. As you can see a large proportion is focused on conceptual work.

Figure 2: Literature: Methods employed in Literature (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

Results: definition gap

The authors presented three open-ended questions to a practitioners’ focus group.
The first question was: what is supply chain risk management?
Figure 3 summarizes the results highlighting the fact, that most practitioners see supply chain risk management concerned mostly with the variations of supply and demand.

Figure 3: Practitioners: What is Supply Chain Risk Management? (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

The second question revolves around the classification of supply chain risk management in regards to other management areas. For most respondents SCRM is seen as a subset of supply chain management.

Figure 4: Practitioners: How does SCRM relate to SCM? (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

The answers to the last question shows that supply chain risk management is also seen as a subset of the enterprise risk management (ERM).

Figure 5: Practitioners: How does SCRM relate to Enterprise Risk Management? (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

Results: research survey

Building on the prior results, the authors conducted a small survey using seven questions/statements regarding the current state of supply chain risk research.
Figure 6 lists the questions.

Figure 6: Researchers Questionnaire (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

As you can see the questions are mostly normative, looking for answers on how things should be.

The results therefore are meant to close the gaps.
According to the survey supply chain risk should be concerned with dealing with unknown, disruptions/disasters/low probability, high-impact events (figure 7).

Figure 7: Researchers: Definition of Supply Chain Risk Management (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

There still is an agreement towards the process Gap, even though it is not as pronounced. The answers however are not very clear as well (better foundation of SCRM, closer industry collaboration and case-studies, better way to publish and share research).

Figure 8 collects the answers to the question on how the methodology gap should be remedied.

Figure 8: Researchers: How should the Methodology Gap be addressed? (Sodhi, Son, Tang, 2012)

The focus should still be on qualitative empirical work (case studies and similar methods) to gather more insights about supply chain risk management practices first.

Conclusion

Supply chain risk management has been around for about one decade now. Considering the complexities of the field it has had a good start up to now. It is only natural that there are still many missing pieces that have to be found and linked together to generate a comprehensive picture of supply chain risk in a descriptive and normative way.
Supply chain risk management is not always established as a distinct function/department in companies. So it seems that businesses do not agree on how to integrate supply chain risks into their decision-making processes. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that descriptive research in supply chain risk management leads to a huge variety of results.

If you want, you can learn more about Practitioner Views on Supply Chain Risk Management.

Reference:

Sodhi, M.S., Son, B-G., & Tang, C.S. (2012). Researchers’ Perspectives on Supply Chain Risk Management Production and Operations Management, 21 (1), 1-13

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Information Overflow - This Week in Supply Chain Management (20 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:47:32 +0000

This week was filled with preparations for our summer vacation. This year we are going to Norway. We will start start in Bergen on the west coast and for the first week stay in a small vacation home nearby Sand directly at the Fjord. Later on we will drive to Oslo (east coast) passing Hardangervidda National Park. On our way back we will use a more northern route, but that’s still in planning.

This week I found three really nice articles for you to read. Have a look!

Articles

The resource-based view supports the notion that a company can generate competitive advantages from the resources it controls. Andreas Wieland points to an article which discusses the question if a supply chain can be viewed as a company’s asset as well. (SCM Research)
Enterra Insights talks about the obstacles to thorough supply chain risk analyses. Despite the growing need for a more rigorous risk management approach many companies get overwhelmed by the complexities involved. (Enterra Insights)

Software

Infosys put a short presentation online, covering the basic risk concepts included in their SCRM Product Suite. (Infosys)

Enjoy your weekend!

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Research - This Week in Supply Chain Management (19 / 2012)

Daniel Dumke — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:40:16 +0000

This week ended for me with a discussion of the possible congruence of research and practice and if one could really believe that “models” are even applicable to any real-life situation.

I would like the chance to stress my point of view again here:

I think in scientific research the selection of the methodology or approach is usually guided more by the needs of the research subject than by the efficiency restrictions set in practice. So of course, a scientific study may very well contain all aspects which would also be part of the same task in practice.
Let me give you an example: In one part of my dissertation thesis I analyzed the structure of the supply chain risk management processes and strategies used to reduce supply chain risks within several companies. Based on the different environments of the questioned companies, recommendations were given on the optimal design of the processes and strategies.
Models of a given system (e.g. supply chain) have to be tailored both to the system in focus and the case of application. Models are applied in a variety of industries: Banking shows some of the weaknesses of relying too much on models which are too abstract. On the other hand in logistics, production and supply chain design models are used successfully in everything from route-, shop-floor or location-planning.

Right now I am sitting on a train on my way back from Stuttgart, listening to Philip Glass. I am looking forward to two days in Berlin, visiting my former roommate.
But now, let’s have a look at what was worth reading this week.

Articles

First off, Forbes discusses the question “Can Your Business Survive the Butterfly Effect?” (Forbes)
We’re seeing a growing interest from companies who are looking for ways to leverage these technologies and the social aspects of business networks to predict supplier risk and help improve supplier performance across the n-tier supply chain.
Furthermore Tom Groenfeldt presents supply chain risks from the point of view of an insurer (Zurich Financial). (Forbes)

Hope you have a nice weekend.

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How relevant are Business Sciences to managerial Practice?

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:05:00 +0000

There are only very few studies, which investigate the impact of research in business has on the actual research field.

In other fields the impact is easily seen. Without research there would be no modern medicine, without research there would be no buildings rising 800m and more.

But where would business be without research in the business and economics sciences?

For the part of operations management (OM) research the authors de-Margerie and Jiang (2011; “How relevant is OM research to managerial practice?”) analyze the key factors of literature to be relevant for practitioners.

Method

Impact on business oriented problems is a major criterion for many leading OM journals. To analyze the factors the authors employed an expert panel, made up from senior practitioners with cross-functional experience in international operations. Each of them was assigned with the task of reading and assess the ten most downloaded papers of the Journal of Operations Management.

The selected papers are listed in figure 1.

Figure 1: Top ten downloaded Papers (Journal of Operations Management; from 2004 to 2007; de-Margerie and Jiang, 2011; click to enlarge)

The assessment was based on seven criteria and graded on a five point Likert scale.

Descriptive relevance (e.g. “this article’s findings represent the ‘real world’”)

Goal relevance (e.g. “the article produces definitive results for decision making”)

Non-obviousness (e.g. “this article’s findings are just common sense”)

Timeliness

Readability (e.g. “this article is too abstract or complicated to be understood”)

Topic (e.g. “this article has a guideline that connects the reader to the problem and solutions”)

Usefulness

Results

Based on the direct survey data from practice [in this study], this research empirically derived a much smaller number of dimensions as replacements for the original variables of relevance while still retaining their original character.

The first finding is represented by the three criteria which are used by the practitioners to evaluate OM research.

“whether academic research is applicable or implementable to the practice;”

“whether academic research provides novel insights or new perspectives to management; and”

“whether academic research helps practitioners recognize their situation (i.e. communicates in recognizable ways).”

Furthermore the authors show that the evaluated ten papers did achieve high score in the second and third criterion.

Since these papers were primarily downloaded by other OM researchers, these papers should be important or relevant to other OM scholars’ research. Therefore, we may conclude that the academia of OM shares the second and third criteria of relevance with the practice.

The authors explain the lower scoring of the first criterion with the “the conflict between academic research’s goal and executive’s expectations. Practitioners expect to obtain immediate resolutions of current problems in specific operational contexts. In contrast, scholarly researchers ‘are required to reflect on the implications of innovations in an effort to distill knowledge that will stand the test of time and be applicable over a wide array of situations’”

Conclusion

This again was a very nice article.

Methodically, all steps are explained in detail and the assumptions seem reasonable.

Formally, the article guides the reader through its content without loosing the red thread from the research question to the presentation of the results.

Content-wise, the article touches interesting new grounds. Of course research should never follow practice blindly, so a gap between research and practice is only natural. For me, another interesting question on a broader scale would be, to what degree business research is transferred to practice.

Reference:

de-Margerie, V., & Jiang, Bin (2011). How relevant is OM research to managerial practice? International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 31 (2), 124-147

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Research Critique: Determinants of Strategic Supply Chain Risk Management

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:44:00 +0000

In 2010 Lassar et al. did a grounded theory study (see here for more information on techniques for theory creation) on the question of what the determinants of strategic supply chain risk management might be?

Methodology

The authors used a grounded theory approach to validate their theory. GT consists of a series of interviews where each subsequent interview may build on the last one with the goal of exploring a concept from different angles. In the case of Lasser et al. the focus was on high tech companies located in Mexico. As a first step the authors build their conceptual model for the determinants of strategic supply chain risk management based on literature. They hypothesis that supply chain risk management is built on resources available for the company (resource based view), the network and performance criteria.

Resources include organizational systems and processes, information, knowledge, capabilities, partners and alliances, and other assets.

Based on this theoretical background the researchers conducted 24 interviews within eight different companies.

Results

The interviews lead to a multitude of answers in five key areas:

How do firms conceptualize and define supply chain management?
What kind of processes and systems do supply chain participants utilize in their enterprises?
How committed is senior management to SCM?
What role does performance play in supply chain management?
What specific risk management actions do companies employ?

Our qualitative assessment of the sample firms – multinational buyers along with suppliers – confirms that a symbiotic triad of resources, networks, and performance are key determinants of strategic risk management in supply chains in one important emerging market – Mexico.

Critique

I seldom use a critique section for an article, since usually I only present articles which I deem well written, reliable and interesting.
This study sounds very interesting at first, so I included it on my reading list, but during the evaluation process I came to the conclusion that I found it unpresentable. I really struggled with myself, but then after I continued reading it, I started to realize that this is a great chance for showing you some of the things I dislike in a scientific paper.

The concept proves to be very vague
The authors build a concept for the influences on supply chain risk management from literature. The result: SCRM is based on resources, the network, and performance. The authors do discuss shortly what they subsume under these terms. But what is conspicuously missing is the reasoning for taking exactly these? Why not go with strategic choice and argue that SCRM is defined by the managers and their environment? Why is it the network and not the type of supply chain which defines the SCRM? As a result, already the first chapter leaves us with more questions than we had before.
No pictures
Even though I am a fan of nicely written paragraphs where a picture of what the author meant just pops into your mind, I also know that this writing-only method is not for everyone. So it is always a good idea to support a concept with a picture containing the key elements and their relations to each other and with their “environment”. For example the authors could have used a three column layout with SCRM on top and the determinants underneath? At least if its that what they meant.
Methodological discussion
Building on the definition of their framework the authors claim to use grounded theory to validate their concept. Sadly, there is no real description of the authors’ understanding of the methodology so I can only analyze the context.
To my understanding there are two different streams within grounded theory. One (my feeling is, that it’s the more popular one) particularly states, that grounded theory is based on the idea, that the theory has to develop itself during the interviews. This is done to prevent a very important thing: Bias. Every human interaction is somehow biased. So questions during an interview, not only contain the content of the question but also prejudice and believes of the sender of the question. And of course the interviewees not only respond to the content of the question but also the prejudice and biases. In this case the authors already had their completed framework in mind, and were supposedly steering the conversations towards their framework, of course confirming their preexisting believes. Interestingly I do not think you can find this bias easily in the results, but this does not mean it is not there.
Results
Even worse then a bias in the result, is the presentation of the results themselves. The goal of the interviews was to validate the preexisting believes of the authors (that’s is bad as explained above). But if I wanted to validate the concept, why not use this concept as a foundation for the outline of the discussion of the results. Why? I really have problems with seeing the correlation even between the headlines of their results (see above) and their concept? Some do correlate, but for example what does the “employment of risk management actions in a company” have to do with their concept of resources, network and performance. And in my point of view this gets worse the more you read the interpretations. So I am really asking myself: How could the authors really see their framework supported by the interviews?
Representativeness
Last and just a small addition: The authors rightfully state at the end that this study cannot be viewed as representative, since it only included a small sample of companies. So the authors imply that with a bigger sample (and the same method) it would be representative…? No! Grounded theory does not want to be representative, so this argument is just mute. The goal is instead to generate a valid (grounded) theory (not to validate a preexisting theory!), which can then be tested using other methods, like a survey.

Conclusion

I have to admit that I am not an expert on grounded theory either. So I may be wrong with the forcefulness with which I presented my opinion. But even if we abstract from the methodological aspects, the work can be summarized with two points:

Too little discussion of the methodologies and processes employed to generate these findings and
No obvious connection between their proposed concept and their own stated findings (or again too little elaboration).

The full study can be downloaded here.

Reference:

Lassar, W., Haar, J., Montalvo, R., & Hulser, L. (2010). Determinants of strategic risk Management in Emerging Markets supply Chains: the Case of Mexico Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science, 15 (28), 125-140

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Follow Up: Systematic Review

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:48:00 +0000

Already some time ago I wrote about Systematic Review, a literature analysis approach that should lead to a well founded overview of a specific research field. Since I left out the history and some insights last time I wanted to extend on my last article here.

History and background

Systematic Review developed from a need in medical research to aggregate multiple studies on one research topic into a comprehensive picture on the current state of the research. Meta research can improve the overall validity of the research by increasing the sample size and viewing a research problem from different angles. But this also comes with a disadvantage as well: Small differences in the methodology of the original studies have to be acknowledged by the researcher and incorporated within meta analysis. Larger differences can even lead to the invalidity of the whole meta study.

But meta studies still is one of the best evidence there is (figure 1).

Figure 1: Hierarchy of Evidence (Tranfield et al., 2003)

So to overcome the difficulties the Systematic Review process was developed, with the goal to formalize the process of meta analysis

Transfer

Tranfield (2003) pioneered the transfer of the methodology to the management field with only few adjustments. To justify the transfer he compared the research methodology in management and medicine (figure 2).

Figure 2: Comparison of Management and Medical Research (click to enlarge; Tranfield et al., 2003)

Conclusion

In my own research the Systematic Review approach proves very helpful in organizing the vast amount of research available in supply chain risk management.

Figure 3: Overview Systematic Review Approach (Tranfield et al., 2003)

Reference:

Tranfield, D., Denyer, D., & Smart, P. (2003). Towards a Methodology for Developing Evidence-Informed Management Knowledge by Means of Systematic Review British Journal of Management, 14 (3), 207-222 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.00375

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Issues in Supply Chain Management

Daniel Dumke — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:26:00 +0000

Very often this blog is concerned with the risk part of supply chain risk management. But to understand the risks within supply chain management, one has to understand the supply chain part as well. In 2000 Lambert and Cooper published a paper on the current “Issues in Supply CHain Management” and I want to highlight the main points here.

Understanding of supply chain management

Since the development of the supply chain management concept there has been and still is some discussion on what supply chain management actually includes? A very broad definition of the term can be:

Supply Chain Management is the integration of key busi- ness processes from end user through original suppliers that provides products, services, and information that add value for customers and other stakeholders.

The process frontiers between the companies merge into one and with the help of the information flow all processes are managed (figure 1).

Figure 1: Integrated Business Processes within a Supply Chain (click to enlarge; Lambert and Cooper, 2000)

In the sense of this definition, logistics therefore…

… is that part of the supply chain process that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services, and related information from the point-of-origin to the point-of-consumption in order to meet customers’ requirements.

Methodology

To come to a better understanding of supply chain management the authors used an practice oriented approach and conducted a case study of nine supply chains with over 90 in-depth interviews spanning 15 companies. The interviews were guided using a 36 question interview guide and lasted between one and three hours.

Results

Based on this large research base it is now possible to derive several key findings.
Figure 2 highlights the elements of supply chain management.

Figure 2: Framework of Supply Chain Management (Lambert and Cooper, 2000)

The Network Structure contains the identification of supply chain members (and non-members), furthermore the structural dimensions of the network in horizontal (number of tiers) and vertical (number of elements in each tier) terms.
Supply Chain Business Processes, where key processes are:

Customer relationship management
Customer service management
Demand management
Order fulfillment
Manufacturing flow management
Procurement
Product development and commercialization
Returns
Concerning the business processes the author find that the links between processes can be categorized into four different classes:
Managed process links, which are actively integrated and managed by the focal company
Monitored process links, are not seen as critical but still monitored
Not-managed process links, are links where the focal company is not actively involved in
Non-member process links, managers are aware of other, parallel supply chains.
An example of such supply chain with its links can be found in figure 3.

Figure 3: Example of a Supply Chain with different Links (click to enlarge; Lambert and Cooper, 2000)

The Management Components of SCM are described in figure 4.

Figure 4: Management Aspects of Supply Chain Management (Lambert and Cooper, 2000)

Missing pieces

Based on their research the authors state eight key questions related to their framework which need further research in the future:

What are the operational definitions of the key business processes and what are the relationships among these processes?
How should the existing supply chain be mapped? Should the map include all connected firms or only the primary firms?
What is the value proposition at the consumer level or end point of the supply chain?
What metrics should be used to evaluate the performance of the entire supply chain, individual members or subsets of members?
What is the process to take the map of the existing supply chain and to modify it to obtain the best supply chain given the desired outputs?
What determines with whom to link business processes?
What determines the processes to link with these key members?
What determines the type/level of integration that should be applied to each process link?

Conclusion

Of course some of these questions have already been answered in the meantime, at least partially. But I wanted to highlight this general framework since it shows several important aspects for risk management as well. E.g. the categorization of the links, which could be a great tool to maximize the efficiency of risk management efforts or that supply chain mapping overall also has positive effects for risk management.

Reference:

Lambert, D.M., & Cooper, M.C. (2000). Issues in Supply Chain Management Industrial Marketing Management , 29, 65-83 DOI: 10.1016/S0019-8501(99)00113-3

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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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