History of supply chain management

Before the 1950s, logistics was thought of in military terms. It had to do with procurement, maintenance, and transportation of military facilities, materials, and personnel.

The scope of physical distribution was expanded to include physical supply and was called business logistics. It emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

The importance of logistics increased considerably, when physical distribution management in manufacturing firms was recognized as a separate organizational function . The SCM concept was coined in the early 1980s by consultants in logistics.

The first use of the term “supply chain management” is commonly related to the article “Supply Chain Management: Logistics Catches up with Strategy” by Oliver and Weber (1982).

The term “supply chain management” then came into widespread use in the 1990s. In practice, supply chain management became important in the 1990s in retail networks, the automotive industry, electronics, and textiles.

The origins of the technique of supply chain management are thought to lie in the shipyards of Japan and were first used in the early 1950s. The technique was later used in the car manufacturing industry and in particular was pioneered, again in Japan, by Toyota.

Physical distribution begins to emerge as an area of study and practice, which is the coordination of more than one activity associated with physically supplying product to the marketplace.

The development of supply chain management was driven in the 1990s by three main trends. These are: customer orientation, markets globalization, and establishing an information society.
History of supply chain management