Developing a Customer Responsive Supply Chain Strategy (Supply Chain Segmentation)
Supervisor: Dr. Janet Godsell
In their pursuit to survive the fierce competition created by the global economic down turn businesses face the apparently conflicting challenges of driving growth through innovation whilst simultaneously reducing costs. Porter’s view of competing either through cost leadership or differentiation is replaced by the need for cost leadership and differentiation. This business challenge has direct impact on the supply chain (SC). Whilst it has been long recognised that ‘one size does not fit all’ businesses have been slow to adopt the principles of SC segmentation critical for the simultaneous delivery of cost leadership and differentiation.
Focused around the Supply Chain Responsiveness in Practice (SCRiP) industrial forum Janet leads a team of researchers who explore this topic from a number of different perspectives. What they share is a desire to conduct rigorous research in the field of customer responsiveness that is relevant to practice.
Janet is open to new perspectives as to how the challenges of developing and implementing a customer responsive supply chain strategy can be addressed. Potential research topics include:
- Role of predicative analytics in developing a segmented supply chain strategy
- Segmented network modelling
- Cost to Serve
- Role of leadership in the successful implementation of a segmented supply chain strategy
- Segmentation in a service context
- Segmentation in global supply networks
- Role of Sales and Operations Planning in governing supply chain segmentation
Contact details:
Dr Janet Godsell
Janet.godsell@cranfield.ac.uk