Truly effective supply chain management is planned and purposive. A value-driven supply chain that is coupled to the strategic priorities of the firm is the result of deliberate management action and strategic corporate investments aimed to procure, develop and configure the appropriate resources, processes and metrics that define that firm's supply chain. A framework of supply chain design is proposed that comprehends three key levels of factors critical in understanding supply chain design: influencers, design decisions and building blocks. Influencers are higher-level considerations such as the business and political environment, the business model employed, the firm's desired outcomes and the supply chain life cycle. Design decisions include the social, behavioural and physical/structural design elements that define a supply chain. Building blocks include the inventory, transportation, capacity and technology decisions that are used to implement the supply chain. Supply chain design needs to comprehend these three levels of analysis. The articles in this special issue are introduced in the context of these levels of analysis and a research agenda is suggested that can be pursued in light of this framework, highlighting areas that are covered in this special issue and areas where research opportunities exist.
We draw on extant literature on strategic sourcing and supply base rationalization to anchor our argument that measuring supplier performance diversity is germane to executing an effective supply base rationalization strategy. We explicate how a novel approach to data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency assessment can be utilized to measure this performance diversity. More specifically, our methods are anchored in cross efficiency analysis in DEA that allows for evaluating the efficiency of a supplier with respect to the optimal weights (strengths) of its peers. This methodology is applied to an actual supplier dataset of a large multinational telecommunications company in categorizing their supply base into groups for effective supplier rationalization. We conclude that measuring and analyzing the performance diversity within the framework of DEA provides a mechanism for firms to better balance a rationalized and diversified supply base with unique skills.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.