Rethinking your supply chain strategy: a brief guide

Abstract

Rethinking a supply chain strategy is not a trivial problem. Supply chains tend to be rather complex entities, and the act of thinking strategically about them, what we call supply chain 'strategizing', reflects this complexity. The absence of an established answer in the supply chain management literature regarding how to rethink the supply chain strategy of an organization further compounds what is already a daunting problem. Between 2006 and 2016, a team of researchers at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) explored the problem of supply chain strategizing, as part the Supply Chain 2020 Project. After a decade of research in collaboration with world-class organizations, significant progress was made. Many questions remain open, and will continue to be explored by an offshoot of the SC2020 Project, called the MIT Supply Chain Strategy Lab. But we feel it is time to share with the community of supply chain managers the insights we have derived so far on how to re-think the supply chain strategy of an organization. That is the purpose of this text.