Supply chain management: Detecting structural changes

The new forces of globalization, the World Wide Web, the appearance of new methodologies/tools to integrate engineering and business functions, the development of electronic commerce and their complex interrelationships are shaping the competitive landscape of business. Business organizations are looking for strategies to meet these new challenges and take advantage of these new opportunities. One of these strategies is supply chain management. This paper introduces the modeling and optimization of the supply chain but taking into consideration the dynamic nature of it. The modeling considers how to take advantage of the changes in structure during the evolution of a supply chain and means to detect the shifting of constraints. Two scenarios are discussed to outline the ideas.