Supply Chain Design Overview

Principles

Definition

Supply chain design is a strategic academic concept and research area focused on configuring the physical structure of a supply chain network. It investigates optimal network configurations, involving decisions on facility location, capacity, and roles, and the flow of resources, to achieve long-term performance objectives like cost efficiency, responsiveness, and sustainability.

Ontological type

Core Decisions

Modeling Approaches

Performance Objectives

Key developments

Key Figures

Resilience-Focused Design era

Hau L. Lee [1], Stanford University [2], emerged as a leading figure in resilience-focused supply chain design during the 1995–2006 era. In the 1997 paper Information Distortion in a Supply Chain: The Bullwhip Effect [3], he identified how information distortions propagate through supply chains and proposed analytic approaches to attenuate distortions, improving end-to-end forecasting, inventory, and capacity decisions. Lee [1] helped formalize network governance and supplier-portfolio configurations to distribute and manage risk across interfirm linkages, laying groundwork for resilience-focused governance in this era. Lee [1] also integrated environmental considerations with resilience objectives, highlighting early ecological criteria as part of robust supply chain design during 1995–2006.

Design-Led Sustainability era

Craig R. Carter [1] is associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [3] and Texas A&M University [4] in this era. His key contributions in the Design-Led Sustainability era, as reflected in the paper A framework of sustainable supply chain management: moving toward new theory [7], include developing a framework that links design attributes to triple-bottom-line performance, guiding sustainable sourcing and configuration. Dale S. Rogers [2] is connected with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey [5] and Arizona State University [6] during this era. His key contributions, based on the same 2008 paper [7], involve advancing design-led approaches that emphasize dynamic capabilities and mitigation features to reduce vulnerability while maintaining economic objectives, shaping sustainable sourcing and supply-chain configuration strategies.

Adaptive Visibility Design era

Andreas Wieland [1] is a prominent scholar affiliated with Emory University [3] and Universität Hamburg [4] in the Adaptive Visibility Design era. Wieland [1]'s key contributions in this era include the 2021 paper Two perspectives on supply chain resilience [7], which synthesizes dual viewpoints on resilience to advance visibility-driven and anticipatory design in modern networks. Christian F. Durach [2] is affiliated with ESCP Business School [5] and Technische Universität Berlin [6] in this era. Durach [2]'s key contribution in this era is the 2021 paper Two perspectives on supply chain resilience [7], which provides complementary resilience perspectives that inform visibility-enabled, adaptive supply networks and why these insights mattered for building anticipatory and reconfigurable supply chains.