Supply chain

A supply chain moves a product or service from supplier to customer. It is the people, activities, information, and resources which move the product.

Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials, and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end user or customer.^[1] The term is most used in business and finance. In short, the supply chain is an illustration of the different activities carried on in given transit of goods.

More than 9000 people still ask this question on Google search, despite Supply Chain Management (SCM) was introduced in early 1980s (Oliver and Webber, 1982) but it’s has been growing in importance since the early 1990s.

History and Evolution of Supply Chain and Logistics, the author have explained chronological evolution of the concepts of logistics and the supply chain implies the existence of 7 distinct and important phases of as explained below.

• The First: The Transportation Era (1950s)
• The Second: The Physical Distribution (1960s)
• The Third: Physical Supply, Deregulation and Logistics (1970s)
• The Fourth: Transportation, Deregulation, Physical Distribution and Business Logistics (1980s)
• The Fifth: Business Logistics (1990s)
• The Sixth: Logistics and Supply Chain Management (2000s)
• The Seventh: Supply Chain Digitalization (2010’s)

References

1. Kozlenkova, Irina; et al. (2015). "The role of marketing channels in supply chain management". Journal of Retailing. 91 (4): 586–609. doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2015.03.003. Retrieved 28 September 2016.