Managing Supply Chain Networks: Building Competitive Advantage in Fluid and Complex Environments

2. Managing Supply Networks

The efforts to deliver the promise of business value through the management of the supply chains have provided several business models, strategies, and practices. These management mechanisms reflect the understanding that academics and practitioners had of the business environment at the time the mechanisms were structured. It is possible to identify five periods in recent years that give us a clearer perspective of the supply chain eras from the early 1980s to the present.

Figure 2.1 Supply chain eras

Nearly 20 years before these periods, one of the first bold concepts related to what today we know as supply chain ...