End-to-end supply chains: The solution?

The focus onto the final customer is one of the major sources to design and improve the value adding processes of a company. By having the customer's delight [1] in the mind it is required to direct the majority of processes to this delightful momentum. End-to-end supply chain management is exactly stressing on this focus. However, this end-to-end point of view is not new: the customer order cycle is already addressing this since many decades. Hence the question arises “What's new?” Answer: the strong commitment to the circular logistical momentum. Several process layers are linked together and controlled by a customer supply chain controller. In this article these different process layers are explored and a controlling tool developed to achieve such a customer-focused supply chain management. Based on empirical examples of the automotive industry and literature research the different aspects for this paper are retrieved. After these explanations a critical conclusion shows limits of such an end-to-end supply chain and gives ideas for further research fields.