Supply Chain Management: Unheard of in the 1970s, core to today's company

Although the Supply Chain Management (SCM) concept was born at the beginning of the 1980s, research in the field was almost non-existent until the mid-1990s. Since then, the growth of SCM research has been exponential. Currently, SCM is making the change from being an emerging research field to becoming a consolidated one. The aim of this paper is to analyse the way SCM has developed from its origins and to determine whether its present development corresponds to the needs that companies are experiencing. This article provides a frame of reference for SCM research, which is essential for the definitive consolidation of a fledgling field such as this. It also allows any possible gap between SCM research and practice to be minimised.