Essentials of Supply Chain Management, 5th Edition

CHAPTER 10The Promise of Resilient and Sustainable Supply Chains

After reading this chapter you will be able to:

• Assess the potential for profit and resiliency inherent in the self-adjusting feedback loop, and explore how it can be harnessed to drive your supply chain;
• See how real-time collaboration drives resilient and sustainable supply chains and enables us to meet the challenges we face in the coming decades of this century; and
• Appreciate why resilient and sustainable supply chains are those that continuously monitor their operations and collaborate in real time to address problems.

The pace of change and innovation is both exciting and relentless. Over the next decade, innovative companies in different market segments will learn to design and deploy their supply chains to improve their competitive positions in the markets they serve. They will create supply chains that enable them to develop and deliver products and provide levels of service at price points that their competitors cannot match.

We all sense that something profound has happened since the early years of this century. The Internet and social media and smartphones and all the apps are part of it, but it is not only about the Internet and apps. It is more about what we can do by using the Internet and social media and mobile technology and all those apps than it is about any one particular technology. ...