Introduction to the special issue on teaching supply chain management

Production and Operations Management, Spring 2000 by Johnson, M Eric, Pyke, David F

Many excellent cases illustrate these issues, and we find that students can easily identify with many of the examples.

The service and after sales support category addresses the critical, but often overlooked, problem of providing service and service parts (Cohen and Lee 1990). Some leading firms, such as Saturn and Caterpillar, build their reputations on their ability in this area, and this capability generates significant sales (Cohen, Zheng, and Agrawal 1997). Some instructors teach inventory models for slow-moving items in this category.

Reverse logistics and green issues are emerging dimensions of supply chain management (Marien 1998). This area examines both environmental issues (Corbett and van Wassenhove 1993; Herzlinger 1994) and the reverse logistics issues of product returns (Padmanabhan and Png 1995; Clendenin 1997; Rudi and Pyke 1998). There are few teaching cases, and not many models available for this area (Fleischmann et al. 1997). Nevertheless, because of legislation and consumer pressure, the growing importance of these issues is evident to most managers. Managers are being compelled to consider the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to deal with product recovery.

Outsourcing and strategic alliances examines the supply chain impact of outsourcing logistics services. With the rapid growth in third party logistics providers, there is a large and expanding group of technologies and services to be examined. These include fascinating initiatives, such as supplier hubs managed by third parties. The rush to create strategic relationships with logistics providers and the many well-published failures have raised questions about the future of such relationships. (See Bowersox 1990; SCMR 1998), and the news stories in Table 2.) In any case, outsourcing continues to raise many interesting issues (Cooper et al. 1997b).

Metrics and incentives examines measurement and other organizational and economic issues. This category includes both measurement within the supply chain (Meyer 1997) and industry benchmarking (CLM 1994; PRTM 1997). Because metrics are fundamental to business management, there are many reading materials outside of the supply chain literature, including accounting texts for instance. Several recent articles concentrate on the link between performance measurement and supply chain improvement (O'Laughlin 1997; Johnson and Davis 1998).

Finally, global issues examines how all of the above categories are affected when companies operate in multiple countries. This category goes beyond country specific issues, to encompass issues related to crossboarder distribution and sourcing (Arntzen, Brown, Harrison, and Trafton 1995). For example, currency exchange rates, duties and taxes, freight forwarding, customs issues, government regulation, and country comparisons are all included. Note that the location category, when applied in a global context, also addresses some of these issues. As we mentioned earlier, there are several texts devoted to global management and a growing number of cases probe specific issues. Many recent articles also examine challenges in specific regions of the world [e.g., for Asia see Lee and Kopczak (1997) or for Europe see Sharman (1997)].