Is Supply Chain a complex system?

¹ LM2I Laboratory, ENSAM, Meknes, Morocco
² LMAID Laboratory, ENSMR, Rabat, Morocco

^* Corresponding author: raaidisafaa@gmail.com

Abstract

Nowadays, industries are continually looking to implement new subsidiaries in different continents, in order to better fulfill their customers’ needs, generate the best products in the shortest time and cheaper than their competitors. Achieving these goals is no longer related to the company itself, but to all partners in the supply chain. This justifies the need for efficient and judicious management of the whole supply chain, through the collective intervention of all its actors. Needless to say, a supply chain is a system made up of a set of suppliers, producers, subcontractors, retailers, wholesalers and customers, between whom material, information and financial flows are exchanged. Management of these flows is becoming increasingly difficult and constitutes the main source of the supply chain complexity. In order to alleviate this problem and improve supply chain performance, it is necessary to model it, taking into consideration its characteristics, which make it a complex system. Hence, the scoop of this paper is to prove that supply chain is a complex system, by highlighting its most relevant characteristics that make it such a system. Complex means what is braided together or woven together. If we separate the elements, we get acquaintance elements, but we lose their interactions. Within this trend, our contribution subscribes with its ultimate purpose modelling supply chain as complex system.