Title: Strategic approach to manage supply chain flexibility: a proposal

Authors: Dileep More; A. Subash Babu

Addresses: Operations Management Group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, D. H. Road, Joka, Kolkata 700104, India ' Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Indian Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India

Abstract: Todays Supply Chains (SCs) are operating in complex and competitive business environment. To adapt, reduce or eliminate stimuli (uncertainty, disturbances or changes), making the SC more flexible is emerging as a new strategic tool. In reality, SCs are managed by various performance measures and flexibility is one of them, which is being more focused by researchers and industry practitioners. However, Supply Chain Flexibility (SCF) has continued to be a major challenge to comprehend and put it into real practice. An attempt has been made to develop a flexibility scorecard focusing on the flexibility metric in a balanced way. The paper addresses the important issues of how to provide flexibility in SCs and develops a specific proposal based on a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach.

Keywords: SCM; supply chain management; balanced scorecard; BSC; flexibility metrics; supply chain flexibility; complex environments; competitive environments; business environments; stimuli reduction; stimuli elimination; uncertainty; disturbances; changes; strategic tools; performance measures; flexibility scorecards; logistics systems; logistics management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2012.046703

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2012 Vol.11 No.4, pp.492 - 521

Published online: 28 Nov 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article