Role of Big Data in Supply Chain Management

Abstract

AbstractIn today’s world, the supply chain management sector plays a vital role in everyone’s life. During the recent times, the number of people or customers buying or ordering goods online has increased enormously. The management process of transformation of raw materials to finished goods can be termed as Supply Chain Management (SCM). The actors involved in the supply chain are the vendors or suppliers, distributors and customers. At every stage of this chain, large volumes of data get generated. These data are a collection of information from a variety of domains such as goods, clothing, accessories and so on. This big data need be used wisely to improve the supply chain management. The big data is a more than just internal data from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and SCM. The statistical analysis methods such as regression, hypothesis testing or sample size determination are used to analyse the internal as well and newly created data that provide new outcomes which in turn help to improve the decision making involved in the supply chain. Decision making choices might be which operating model to choose, who should be the vendor for a particular item and so on. This chapter aims to explain the role of Big data and its analysis in supply chain management.KeywordsEnterprise resource planning (ERP)Supply chain management (SCM)Big dataStatisticsBig data analytics