Supply Chain Performance and Evaluation Models

Introduction

Companies define their new internal or external modes of organization using organizational models learned through management experience (empirical models), or gained through predefined concepts and framework (reference models). These reference models are tools for the analysis or creation of processes which offer managers the possibility of implementing various “best practices”. Depending on the management modes, these “best practices” are different for each company.

In this book, we will address supply chain management, which is defined as “the integration of key operational processes from the end user to the original suppliers of products, services and information, which bring added value to customers and other stakeholders” [CSC 98].

“Best practices” for supply chain management are characterized by the quest for improvement in the collaboration between all of the companies. This collaboration usually takes the form of the introduction of common management tools (e.g. Vendor Management Inventory, Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment), the use of inter-company information technologies (e.g. Web Data Interchange and Internet of Things), or by sharing experience in product design or in manufacture.

We will return in detail to the definitions of supply chain management and will analyze the notion of performance, using systemic modeling. We will show that supply chain management has its basis in a systemic approach where each sub-element of the system ...