Impact of Product Characteristics on Supply Chains: An Analytical Literature Review

Supply chains are typically considered to consist of many stages across several organizations starting from raw material sources through component production to manufacturing and further on via distribution operations to B-to-B customers and consumers. This paper focuses on analyzing product-related characteristics: what the characteristics mentioned in the literature are, and the impact they have on the structure and design of supply chains. The authors look at how product characteristics in general influence the design of supply chains, and their effect on different stages of supply chains. In the literature analysis, the focus is on examining the impact of product characteristics on supply chain strategy and structures, purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, and logistics services. Finally, they draw conclusions on the above. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, based on supply chain management literature, the authors propose a framework for analyzing the impact of product characteristics on supply chains. Secondly, at the end of the paper, they extend the framework by summarizing the key results pertaining to each supply chain management area under analysis. These include the characteristics of the main frameworks used in previous studies and the generic product characteristics used.