A review of soft computing applications in supply chain management

It is broadly recognised by global companies that supply chain management is one of the major core competencies for an organisation to compete in the marketplace. Organisational strategies are mainly concentrated on improvement of customer service levels as well as reduction of operational costs in order to maintain profit margins. Therefore supply chain performance has attracted researchers’ attention. A variety of soft computing techniques including fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms have been employed to improve effectiveness and efficiency in various aspects of supply chain management. Meanwhile, an increasing number of papers have been published to address related issues. The aim of this paper is to summarise the findings by a systematic review of existing research papers concerning the application of soft computing techniques to supply chain management. Some areas in supply chain management that have rarely been exposed in existing papers, such as customer relationship management and reverse logistics, are therefore suggested for future research.