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In order to respond to competitive pressures, managers need to know more about the strategic aspects of supply chain management. This paper addresses this need by critically reviewing the supply chain management literature and by suggesting a research agenda for the future. A conceptual model is provided which helps to identify certain assumptions made in the literature that must be challenged. The model also provides a tool for identifying the major contributions in the literature. Finally, a research agenda is developed.

With the inaugural issue of this new journal, researchers have an opportunity to publish in a journal that is entirely devoted to the new paradigm of supply chain management. With this development as a new field, some researchers argue that it is an extension, or in some cases, a subset of operations management. We contend that neither of these is the case. In fact, the field of SCM spans multiple interdisciplinary areas, and thus must draw from a vast field or prior research in business, industrial psychology, economics, operations research, and organisational science. Researchers in this field are encouraged to broaden the span of their epistemological base to allow the field to grow in a manner that can best advance our knowledge in how to manage supply chains.

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IN BRIEF Despite the increased attention procurement managers are giving MRO purchasing, success in managing MRO items has been limited. Increased awareness of MRO purchasing can be traced, in part, to the increased use of blanket contracts and procurement cards. However, blanket contracts and procurement cards address only one cost area of MRO purchasing, ordering, and processing costs. While firms save money through increased processing and ordering efficiencies, larger product application cost‐saving opportunities in MRO purchasing lie in improving stocking, receiving, distribution, and searching activities. This article discusses how Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor plant developed and implemented a new MRO purchasing strategy which achieved dramatic cost reductions in all MRO cost areas. By creating MRO partnerships, Bethlehem Steel decreased all of its key MRO cost drivers, increased internal and external customer service, and used MRO supplier expertise to create ongoing reduction efforts.