SUNScholar - Browsing by Author "Van Eeeden, Joubert"

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Incorporating product categorization to improve the performance of SA’s public healthcare supply chain : a research agenda
(South African Institute for Industrial Engineering, 2018) Mapowo, Newton; Bam, Louzanne; De Kock, Imke H.; Van Eeeden, Joubert
In an influential publication from the late 1990’s, Marshall Fisher argued that many of the challenges in supply chains could be traced back to a lack of alignment between the type of product and the type of supply chain. Subsequently, the idea of tailoring supply chain management practices and policies to the characteristics of the products being supplied has received significant research attention, and various researchers have worked on modifying the premise as well as on its application to diverse sectors, with promising findings. The South African National Department of Health is in the process of rolling out the Visibility and Analytics Network (VAN) reference framework, with the aim of ensuring sustained availability of and access to commodities. At present, the VAN strategy does not incorporate a product categorization element. This paper proposes a research agenda for determining how product categorization could be incorporated into the VAN strategy to enable supply chain practices and policies to be tailored to the characteristics of products.