Impact of big data on supply chain management

TLDR

Big data offer new opportunities, added value, and operational excellence for existing supply chain practices. The study aims to extend the SCOR model by integrating big data and supply chain management. The authors surveyed multinational company employees across five regions and used structural equation modeling to analyze the data. Big data technologies improve operational excellence, cost savings, customer satisfaction, visibility, and communication, and are expected to become industry standard, delivering significant value and monetary gains.

Abstract

This study focuses on big data, which offer new opportunities, added value and operational excellence for existing supply chain practices. A survey was conducted among employees of multinational companies across the United States, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Australia. Structural equation modelling was employed for the statistical analysis of the survey data. The results show that demand management, vendor rating, the Internet of things (IoT), analytics and data science affect the supply chain industry regarding operational excellence, cost savings, customer satisfaction, visibility and reducing the communication gap between demand management and supply chain management (SCM). The adoption of big data technology can create considerable value-added and monetary gain for firms and will soon become a standard throughout the industry. This research provides a new description of the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model by incorporating big data and SCM.