Today supply chain transformation for creating customer value continues to be a priority for
many companies as it enables them to gain a competitive advantage. While value creation is
shaped by external drivers such as market volatility technology product and service offering
and disruption it can be stymied by the internal stresses arising from the need to minimize
costs limitations in process redesign waste minimization and the unavailability of knowledge
capital. Therefore for companies to survive and prosper the relevant questions to ask would
be how to identify the external internal forces driving changes and how to map the business
drivers to the attributes of transformation. While the contemporary supply chain is
well-structured the evolving economic system is causing disruptions to this structure. The
emergence of novel business paradigms - non applicability of the traditional laws of supply and
demand dominance of negative externality effects and anomalies of high growth rate coexisting
with high supply side uncertainty - must be recognized in transforming supply chains. For
example healthcare delivery and humanitarian relief do not follow known supply demand
relationships the negative externality effects are increasing sustainability concerns and
emerging economies with dysfunctional business infrastructure must manage high growth rates.
This book delves into the transformation issues in supply chains and extends the concepts to
incorporate emerging issues. It does so through ten chapters divided into three sections. The
first section establishes the framework for transformation while the second focuses on the
transformation of current chains in terms of products processes supply base procurement
logistics and fulfillment. Section three is devoted to capturing the key issues in transforming
supply chains for emerging economies humanitarian relief sustainability and healthcare
delivery.This work will be of interest to both academics and industrial practitioners and will
be of great value to graduate students in business and engineering. It raises many questions
some provocative and provides many leads for in-depth research. Several approaches are
suggested for new problems along with a discussion of case studies and examples from different
industries.
