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Overview
The Forum brings faculty and students from different schools, departments and disciplines together to work on research projects.
These projects focus on problems representative of those found by participating companies. They consist of theoretical and model based research, empirical research, and detailed field-based studies of supply chain problems. Collaboration with industrial researchers is encouraged in order to ensure that projects realistically represent the phenomena faced by companies in designing and managing their supply chains. Special attention is paid to issues associated with global supply chains.
To compete successfully in today's market place, companies need to manage effectively and efficiently the activities of design, manufacturing, distribution, service and recycling of their products and services to their customers. Supply chain management deals with the management of materials, information and financial flows in a network consisting of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. The coordination and integration of these flows within and across companies are critical in effective supply chain management.
It is important that the information, material and financial flows are coordinated effectively in a supply chain. Material flows involve both physical product flows from suppliers to customers through the chain, as well as the reverse flows via product returns, servicing, recycling and disposal. Information flows involve order transmission and delivery status. Financial flows involve credit terms, payment schedules, and consignment and title ownership arrangements. These flows cut across multiple organizations within a company as well as across companies and industries. In the last few years, the coordination and integration of these flows have attracted significant interest on the part of researchers, management, consultants and practitioners in academia and industry.
Due to the recent trends of vertical disintegration, international procurements, new information technologies and increasing pressure from customers on responsiveness and reliability, and the globalization of operations and markets, supply chain management has become at once a challenge and an opportunity. Indeed, many companies have now viewed supply chain management as the core of their business strategy.
