Global supply chains do not have a common boss or a common owner. This poses challenges to the governance of supply chains. We will discuss such challenges and we will also describe three fundamental concepts that are behind many of the techniques that we will discuss along the course: the prisoner’s dilemma, risk pooling and the bullwhip effect.

In global supply chains, we face challenges (and also have opportunities) at all levels: operational, tactical and strategic. In this week we will focus on supply chain strategy and will discuss the following decision areas: “make or buy” and relationships with partners, segmentation issues and, management of flows of materials in supply chains.

One of the overarching objectives of supply chain management is to continually be able to reconcile supply and demand. In week three we will discuss demand management, in the sense of articulating managerial options to influence and manage demand curves so that they display lower volatility and uncertainty levels.

In week 4 we will discuss the other side of the equation that we started to discuss in week 3 – supply management. Here the main concepts of techniques of inventory management will be discussed in relation to both products (subjected to independent demand) and, components and raw materials (subjected to dependent demand).

In this week we discuss two very relevant and contemporary topics in supply chain management: sustainability and the pursuit of the “triple bottom line” (profit, people and planet) and also technologies (software and hardware) that are associated with Industry 4.0 and their implication to supply chain management practice today and in the future.