The decades of research on scm and its advancements: Comprehensive framework

Abstract

Supply Chain Management (SCM), a corporate strategy approach to materials and distribution management, has been evolving over the last decades from traditional marketing and production functions. The purpose of the study is to explore the bibliometric data of Supply Chain Management and its advancements. Besides, it describes from the origins of traditional SCM to the progress of modern SCM 4.0, with reference to the benefits, function, importance and limitations of all five branches of SCM. The methodology includes a detailed and systematic review of scientific articles published in Scopus indexed journals. The data were obtained from the Scopus database between 1990 and 2021 in order to achieve the study’s desired outcome. Boolean operators and filtering were applied to obtain relevant data. In addition, VOSviewer software is used to visually classify and analyse bibliometric data distribution and network using cluster maps. The study’s findings were divided into three main categories: publication period, coauthorship and citations, with the results demonstrating the diverse needs of SCM in the globalised digital era. Further, the results emphasise that SCM and its advancements have unique merits around the world, but Sustainable SCM and SCM 4.0 remain the most popular as they play a vital role in changing environmental concerns. In addition, the findings reveal that the visualization networks of each category exhibit the strengths and connections of publications. These visualization networks, followed by their analysis, explain the new insight to the present research. This research also paves the way for future research into the evolving trends of SCM in today’s technologically advanced world.