Supply chain partnerships: Opportunities for operations research

A maturing stream of recent conceptual literature has focused upon supply chain partnerships. Theoretically within a supply chain partnership, traditional competitive barriers between supply chain members are mitigated to create mutually beneficial relationships, thus leading to increased information flows, reduced uncertainty, and a more profitable supply chain. Despite extensive conceptual based supply chain literature, very few researchers have attempted a more rigorous analytical approach to supply chain issues. This paper seeks to provide a review of supply chain research from both the qualitative conceptual and analytical operations research perspectives. The expanding importance of supply chain integration presents a challenge to operations researchers to focus more attention on supply chain modeling, and there are numerous opportunities for operations researchers to provide support for the current conceptual based supply chain research. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.