An Overview of Decisions, Performance and Analytics in Supply Chain Management

Businesses today face major challenges in terms of greater competition and increased customer expectations from the global market. With advances in logistics and information technology, today’s customers are exposed to abundant products and services offered worldwide. Thus, businesses aim for competitive advantage and product/service differentiation to stay relevant and profitable. They strive to build robust supply chains that can help them deliver the right product/service more quickly and economically than their competitors. The focus of this book is to provide an overview on the current trends in supply chains as well as present advanced analytical models to optimize the design, planning and operation of supply chains. This chapter discusses the concept of supply chain management, various levels of supply chain decisions and their impacts, drivers and enablers of a supply chain, types of supply chain, and introduces the role of analytics in supply chain. Further, this chapter also presents relevant case studies to help readers better understand various aspects of supply chain management and their importance. Finally, this chapter links the various supply chain problems addressed in this book to the key decision levels and analytical methods, thereby setting the stage for the readers.