How does/can supply chain design influence/or is influenced by locations strategies?

In this paper we explore how supply chain design is influenced by locations strategies. Robust planning is necessary to reap the rewards of a well-designed supply chain, while effective design serves as the foundation for effective planning. Both are constantly modified in response to shifts in the market, guaranteeing that the supply chain stays flexible and responsive. Organizing your supply chain to facilitate effective planning and operation is known as supply chain design. It includes choices on capacity, transportation networks, and facility locations. Supply chain designers face numerous difficulties when deciding on site locations which is a crucial component of every supply chain network. Factors such as transportation costs, location of demand, rates of population, costs of transportation, costs of labour, customer service time and locations of current facilities are all critical to deciding your facility locations. You must consider a number of aspects when making greenfield site selections, including your present and future fixed and variable expenses. For instance, what investments are required today, how many facilities do you already have, how many might you require in the future, and how much will it cost you in 10 years? An often overlooked but essential part of site selection and overall supply chain design is risk and resilience assessments. Taking into consideration the risk at each possible location, such as the likelihood of a natural disaster, the area’s population density, the possibility of political unrest, loadshedding and more. Expanding in a way that makes sense from a business standpoint while also taking your limitations and cost optimization into account is the aim of location selection. You need dependable and useable data to accomplish this. Although you may be able to extract information from a variety of sources, is that information reliable and simple to incorporate into the decision-making process? Finding trustworthy demographic statistics, for instance, is crucial since you need people who are eager to work at your facility. Additionally, since you have never had a facility at this possible location, you are unaware of the expenses associated with transportation to and from that site, thus you require current information on transportation route prices. You won’t be able to identify the best place for your facilities without high-quality data, and your supply chain design will be flawed. In order to investigate how a process-based approach may help resolve these issues, this article takes a systems perspective and is directed by the following research question: How does/can supply chain design influence/or is influenced by locations strategies?