Strategic design of global supply chain configuration : a literature research and empirical study

The aim of this thesis is first to investigate the global supply chain design problem by deep analysis and classification of research papers by special focus on the topics of global supply chain configurations and affecting drivers and second to extract the global supply chain configurations of some global companies by means of case studies. Literature review is made by clustering the papers into three main categories which are qualitative, quantitative and integrated papers. The summary tables of the reviewed papers are showed in the Appendix part. After the general literature review, we focused our attention to the contemporary literature about existing global supply chain configurations and drivers affecting global supply chain design. In configurations part, possible configurations are discussed and a model which shows all these configurations on it is proposed in order to use it in case studies part of the thesis. In drivers’ part, 32 drivers affecting the supply chain design decision is dealt and measurement method for each of them is given. For the case studies part, 47 leading companies in their industry sectors are investigated to extract the global supply chain configurations of them and place the configuration on the model that we developed. Also, with the practice of this study we aim to have a judgment on how companies decide to adopt the most suitable supply chain configuration for them considering their business areas, strategies, constraints and drivers. As a result, the findings related with supply chain practices of the companies are presented and general opinion based on the relation between industry and configuration selection is discussed.