Preprint
Article
Digital Supply Chains for Industry 4.0 - Taxonomy of Approaches
This version is not peer-reviewed.
Submitted:
10 April 2019
Posted:
15 April 2019
Read the latest preprint version here
Abstract
Engineering the supply chain requires a design that possesses the flexibility of a complex adaptive system, consisting of interlinking architecture, with external dimensions and system germane internal elements. The complexity of the subject, the multiple environments, dimensions, elements and concepts, require a research that does not set any limits to the conceptual, analytical or empirical nature of the existing approaches present in practice. This present the rational for applying a taxonomy approach to investigate the integration engineering of supply chain architecture, design and engineering, and building a framework for integrating the existing supply chain approaches. The objectives of this paper are to critically analyse the key supply chain concepts and approaches, to assess the fit between the research literature and the practical issues of supply chain architecture, design and engineering, and to develop a methodology that could be used by practitioners when integrating supply chain architecture and design with strategy engineering. Taxonomy approach is applied to consider criteria for strategy architecture, hierarchical strategy design, strategy engineering, and integration of supply chain architecture, design and engineering as a conceptual system. The results from this paper derived with the findings that the relationship between supply chain architecture, design and engineering is weak and challenges remain in the process of adapting and aligning operations. This paper also derived with a novel approach for addressing these obstacles, based on a new methodology. The novelty that derives from this paper is a methodology for integrating supply chain architecture, design and engineering, with criteria that enable decomposing and building a digital (new and non-existent) supply chain as a system. The paper revealed a number of tools and mechanism which enabled the development of a new methodology for integrating the architecture, design and engineering of a supply chain. The review derived with improvements to current and existing theories for analysing interdependencies within and between their individual contexts. This issue is addressed with a hierarchical method for network design, applied for building and combining the integration criteria.
Keywords:
digital supply chains
; Industry 4.0
; taxonomy
; taxonomy of approaches
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
Downloads
572
Views
586
Comments
0
Subscription
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
MDPI Initiatives
Important Links
© 2025 MDPI (Basel, Switzerland) unless otherwise stated