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3 Types of Supply Chains

The SCOR-model presented in Sect. 2.2.2 is an excellent tool to analyze,
visualize, and discuss the structure of the supply chain, and to reveal redundancies
and weaknesses. It enables the formulation of structural changes and
strategies to improve the performance of the supply chain as a whole.
However, when it comes to planning, the SCOR-model needs to besupplemented.
To be able to identify the type of decision problems facing the
supply chain and guide the selection of standard or specialized modules, models
and algorithms for decision making, this chapter defines a “supply chain
typology”, supporting the SCOR-model at level 2. Two examples illustrate
the use of the typology and will be resumed in Chap. 4 in order to design
planning conceptsfitting the particular requirements of these two types of
supply chains.

3.1 Motivation and Basics

In the early days of production planning and control a single concept and
software system was applied in industry – material requirements planning
(MRP) – irrespective of the many different requirements existing in diverse
areas such as the production of foods or automobiles. On the other hand,if
a production manager was asked whether the production system he manages
is unique and requires special purpose decision-making tools, most probably
the answer would be “yes”. As regards the type of decisions to be made, the
truth lies somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Abstracting from
minor specialties usually reveals that there are common features in today’s
production anddistribution systems which require similar decision support
and thus can be supported by the same software modules.
APS are much more versatile than MRP and ERP systems due to their
modelling capabilities and different solution procedures (even for one module).
Modules offered by a software vendor may still better fit one type of
supply chain than another. So, it is our aim to outline a supplychain typology
which allows to describe a given supply chain by a set of attributes which
we feel might be important for decision-making and the selection of an APS.
Attributes may have nominal properties (e. g. a product is storable or not),
ordinal properties (e. g. an entity’s power or impact on decision-making is regarded higher or lower than average) or cardinal properties (i. e. theattribute
can be counted, like the number of legally separated entities within a supply
chain).
Attributes with a similar focus will be grouped into a peculiar category
to better reveal the structure of our typology (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2). We
will discriminate “functional” attributes to be applied to each organization,
entity, member, or location of a supply chain as well as “structural”attributes
describing the relations among its entities.

3.2 Functional Attributes

Functional attributes (see Tab. 3.1) of an entity are grouped into the four categories
• procurement type,
• production type,
• distribution type and
• sales type.

The procurement type relates to the number (few . . . many) and type of
products to be procured, the latter one ranging from standard productsto
highly specific products requiring special product know-how or production
process know-how (or equipment). The following attribute depicts the sourcing
type, better known by its properties: single sourcing, double sourcing and
multiple sourcing. Single sourcing exists if there is a unique supplier for a
certain product to be procured. In double sourcing there are two suppliers,
eachfulfilling a portion of demand for the product to be procured (e. g. 60%
of the demand is fulfilled by the main supplier, 40 % by the second supplier).
Sourcing contracts with suppliers are usually valid in the medium-term (e. g.
a product’s life cycle). Otherwise, products can be sourced from multiple
suppliers. Next, the flexibility of suppliers with respect to the amounts to be
supplied may...