Tag: Dr. Andreas Wieland

Guest Post: Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management

andreas wielandToday’s Guest Post comes from Andreas Wieland, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at Copenhagen Business School. This is his 4th posting.

What are the future dominant research themes in supply chain management? With my coathors Robert Handfield and Christian Durach, our new article, “Mapping the Landscape of Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management” (see Journal of Business Logistics, Aug., 2016), answers the question. The results are based on survey data collected from 141 leading academics from the SCM discipline.

The respondents were presented a list with 35 topics that are potentially important in SCM. They were then asked to assess to what level they believe these topics will become important in the next years and to what level they think these topics should become important. The will– and should-become-important top 10 lists do not differ substantially. Both of them include the following topics: sustainability & green issues, analytics, risk management & disruption, health care, and innovation. Interestingly, big data, the topic ranked 1st on the will-become-important top 10 list, does not appear on the should-become-important top 10 list. Instead, the people dimension of SCM appears in the should-become-important top 10 list.

We also calculated the differences between the will- and should-become-important survey data. We find that the people dimension of SCM, ethical issues, internal integration, transparency/visibility, and human capital/talent management are the five topics that are expected to be most under researched in the next couple of years. So, if you are planning to start a new research project or a Ph.D. related to SCM, these topics could be good choices. On the other end, big data and analytics turn out to be the topics that are expected to be most over researched.

We also linked the topics that top the should-become-important list to each other. This has led to a table containing ideas that could lead to innovative and cross-disciplinary research questions.

Guest Post: Trends and Strategies in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Dr. A. Wieland
Dr. A. Wieland
Dr. R. Handfield
Dr. R. Handfield

Our Guest Post today comes from Andreas Wieland (http://scmresearch.org/)  and Robert Handfield (http://scm.ncsu.edu/blog/). Andreas heads the Kühne Foundation Center for International Logistics Networks at the TU Berlin. Rob is director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative at North Carolina State University.

Some months ago, BVL International engaged us to find the most important trends that are currently going on in logistics and supply chain management and also the most powerful strategies to cope with these trends.

Our general observation, derived from both over 60 interviews and the analysis of over 1,700 international survey responses, is that complexity in the form of consumer demands for customized solutions, increased product variations, and fragmented channels has increased. We found that high customer expectations, an increasingly networked economy, intense cost pressure, as well as ongoing globalization, shortage of talents, and pronounced volatility are dominating trends in logistics and supply chain management. Other important trends are sustainability, risks and disruptions, and new technologies.

How should organizations prepare themselves to deal with these emerging trends? The top performing companies are not only preparing themselves for these trends; they are even seeking to exploit them for advantage. First, people are the core of any organization, and strategies to find and keep talented logistics managers and warehouse/transportation workers are crucial. Second, a strong core set of processes is needed, and these processes should be adaptive and flexible to accommodate different local and regulatory conditions. Third, technology must be leveraged to provide insights, visibility, and promote an action-oriented culture. Fourth, end-to-end integration will become an increasingly important logistics and supply chain strategy in the next five years. Finally, to pursue ethical, social and ecological standards, organizations will increasingly need to work both vertically and horizontally with suppliers, service providers, local agencies, and governments.

Our report, coauthored by Drs. Frank Straube and Hans-Christian Pfohl,  “Trends and Strategies in Logistics and Supply Chain Management,”  is available on BVL’s website.