A System of Systems Approach for Global Supply Chain Management in the Big Data Era

Global supply chain management (GSCM) is increasingly complex and managers find that traditional methods fall short in adequately addressing many associated challenges. As such, it calls for innovative managerial measures. In this paper, we discuss how the system of systems (SoS) approach and big data technologies can be applied to improve GSCM. We first show that the global supply chain is an SoS and examine various principles of the SoS approach. Then, we review various big data related technologies which are commonly employed in global supply chain management. After that, we propose how big data related technologies can be incorporated into the SoS approach to enhance global supply chain operations by presenting an example. This paper provides practitioners a new perspective on how big data related technologies can be used for global supply chain management with an SoS mindset.