Special session on models and tools for supply chain management

摘要

The strategic importance of managing a supply chain is the spotlight of this special session. Five papers provided by authors of Universities and R&D Institutes from different countries bring their contributions to this theme. In particular, the need of supply chain management models and tools is the main focus addressed by these authors. Almost all of them consider the current Production Planning and Control (PPC) systems quite inflexible to directly support the complexity of managing a co-operative enterprise network. In addition, they propose alternatives to overcome the difficulties involving planning aspects of a supply chain, and discuss possible directions to improve the supply chain management as a whole.