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Supply chain flexibility: a comprehensive review

Author

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  • Atul Kumar Tiwari
  • Anunay Tiwari
  • Cherian Samuel

Abstract

Purpose - – Changes are inevitable in risky and uncertain business environments of today’s volatile supply chains. The concept of flexibility originates from this need to mitigate the ill-effects of risks and uncertainty in supply chains. In this paper, an attempt is made to present an exhaustive review on supply chain flexibility (SCF) and its implementation to gain strategic advantages. Design/methodology/approach - – A citation analysis method is employed in this paper to discuss, analyse and apprehend the conceptual, empirical, analytical and simulation studies done in this field. In this paper, about 110 papers on flexibility from many reputed journals are examined to study and assimilate various aspects of flexibility. Findings - – SCF embraces a unified process-based view including the core processes such as procurement, sourcing, distribution and logistics and mitigates uncertainty or risks involved. The review helps to assimilate the key knowledge about relevant practices in SCF and helps to draw implementing strategies while offering managerial insight on the subject. Research limitations/implications - – Citation and co-citation analysis is done to review the SCF literature. Efforts are made to investigate relevant papers from various journals regarding its ability to mitigate risk or aid in making strategic decision. The study, however, is limited to certain industries in the papers as per chosen approach here. The strategies described in here may further be verified by the researchers and practitioners pertaining to their study or industries focused. Practical implications - – It provides managerial insight for practitioners on how to use flexibility within the firm and across supply chain while considering various trade-offs. Originality/value - – This paper is unique as a review paper, as it encompasses various kinds of studies done on SCF from conceptual models to mathematical models. Further, it briefs with the current practices in industries/SC towards being flexible. It talks of various trade-offs in pursuit of flexibility and concludes while suggesting numerous research gaps and opening new dimensions for SCF research. It offers many managerial and academic implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Atul Kumar Tiwari & Anunay Tiwari & Cherian Samuel, 2015. "Supply chain flexibility: a comprehensive review," Management Research Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(7), pages 767-792, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:mrrpps:v:38:y:2015:i:7:p:767-792
    DOI: 10.1108/MRR-08-2013-0194
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    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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    Cited by:

    1. Chahal, Hardeep & Gupta, Mahesh & Lonial, Subhash & Raina, Swati, 2019. "Operational flexibility-entrepreneurial orientation relationship: Effects and consequences," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 154-167.
    2. Shivam Gupta & Vinayak A. Drave & Surajit Bag & Zongwei Luo, 2019. "Leveraging Smart Supply Chain and Information System Agility for Supply Chain Flexibility," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 547-564, June.
    3. Han, Jeong Hugh & Wang, Yingli & Naim, Mohamed, 2017. "Reconceptualization of information technology flexibility for supply chain management: An empirical study," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 196-215.
    4. Zitzmann, Immanuel & Karl, David, 2018. "Adequate flexibility potential to handle supply chain uncertainties," Chapters from the Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conference of Logistics (HICL), in: Kersten, Wolfgang & Blecker, Thorsten & Ringle, Christian M. (ed.), The Road to a Digitalized Supply Chain Management: Smart and Digital Solutions for Supply Chain Management. Proceedings of the Hamburg International C, volume 25, pages 251-270, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute of Business Logistics and General Management.
    5. Delic, Mia & Eyers, Daniel R., 2020. "The effect of additive manufacturing adoption on supply chain flexibility and performance: An empirical analysis from the automotive industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    6. Marta Pérez-Pérez & Canan Kocabasoglu-Hillmer & Ana María Serrano-Bedia & María Concepción López-Fernández, 2019. "Manufacturing and Supply Chain Flexibility: Building an Integrative Conceptual Model Through Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis," Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Springer;Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, vol. 20(1), pages 1-23, December.
    7. Eriksson, Katarina, 2019. "An option mechanism to coordinate a dyadic supply chain bilaterally in a multi-period setting," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 196-209.
    8. Iman Kazemian & Samin Aref, 2016. "Multi-echelon Supply Chain Flexibility Enhancement Through Detecting Bottlenecks," Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Springer;Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, vol. 17(4), pages 357-372, December.
    9. Wagner, Stephan M. & Grosse-Ruyken, Pan Theo & Erhun, Feryal, 2018. "Determinants of sourcing flexibility and its impact on performance," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 329-341.
    10. Muhammad Irfan & Mingzheng Wang & Naeem Akhtar, 2019. "Impact of IT capabilities on supply chain capabilities and organizational agility: a dynamic capability view," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 113-128, December.
    11. Allam Yousuf & Hossam Haddad & Miklos Pakurar & Serhii Kozlovskyi & Anastasiia Mohylova & Oksana Shlapak & Felfoldi Janos, 2019. "The Effect of Operational Flexibility on Performance: A Field Study on Small and Medium-sized Industrial Companies in Jordan," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 15(1), pages 47-60.
    12. Abdulkareem Salameh Awwad & Omar Mohammed Ali Ababneh & Mahmoud Karasneh, 2022. "The Mediating Impact of IT Capabilities on the Association between Dynamic Capabilities and Organizational Agility: The Case of the Jordanian IT Sector," Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Springer;Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management, vol. 23(3), pages 315-330, September.
    13. Novillo Villegas, Sylvia Mercedes & Haasis, Hans-Dietrich, 2017. "Supply chain flexibility and SMEs internationalization: A conceptual framework," Chapters from the Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conference of Logistics (HICL), in: Kersten, Wolfgang & Blecker, Thorsten & Ringle, Christian M. (ed.), Digitalization in Supply Chain Management and Logistics: Smart and Digital Solutions for an Industry 4.0 Environment. Proceedings of the Hamburg Inter, volume 23, pages 195-212, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute of Business Logistics and General Management.

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