Abstract
For businesses to compete in the commercial sector where markets are increasingly more volatile and unpredictable demands create uncertainty, their supply chains have needed to adapt to respond to such unpredictability. This capability a supply chain has of becoming flexible is referred to as agility (Christopher, 2000; Prater et al., 2001) and some of the conditions in which an agile approach is best suited can be described by the following characteristics: (i) short life cycle products; (ii) high product variety in the face of unpredictable demand; (iii) small volumes and higher profit margins; (iv) competition based on product specification. With this agility, the supply chain more frequently operates in a global context and there is an increasing trend to outsource the supply and manufacturing overseas, through a complex supply network (Prater et al., 2001; Storey et al., 2005; Masson, 2007), to reduce costs.
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© 2016 Michael Pearson, Ron Masson and Anthony Swain
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Pearson, M., Masson, R., Swain, A. (2016). Process Control in Agile Supply Chain Networks. In: Pawar, K.S., Rogers, H., Potter, A., Naim, M. (eds) Developments in Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137541253_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137541253_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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