Market-Driven Management and Global Supply Chain

The market globalization and the conditions of over-supply, together with demand uncertainty and instability, have pushed companies to face new competitive challenges and major changes in the way business are managed.The new global supply chain approach adopted by market-driven firms is based, therefore, on the combination of three elements: 1. Ability to understand the market and speed to satisfy it (the winners of the industry will be those who have the skill to reach customers by understanding their needs and the changing nature of their needs); 2. Agility and adaptability to external circumstances while maintaining optimal cost and service structure; 3. Reliability, obtained by minimizing waste and reducing time in all phases. The purpose of this work is precisely to identify the new designing drivers for the configuration of supply chains for market-driven firms operating in the global context. The configuration that in our view appears to be adequate to the abovementioned needs assumes the characteristics of a type of demand driven supply network or of a supply network whose dynamics are in perfect sync with the market demand and which are able to easily reconfigure themselves to exploit opportunities generated by the instability and the temporary nature of demand. In conclusion we present a model that make a difference between supply chain (traditional and demand driven), and supply network (integrated and demand driven).