LARGe Supply Chain Management attempts to put together Lean, Agile, Resilient, and Green approaches in Supply Chain Management. Lean supply chain management aims to get close to zero inventories and reduce work-in-process; Agile goes for quick respond to customer enquiries and market changes while controlling costs and quality; Resilience is about sustaining disturbances which may hit supply chain; and Green refers to sustainability in supply chain through low emission to the nature and recycling strategy for products.
The idea of LARGe SCM was developed in the research unit in mechanical and industrial engineering (UNIDEMI) in faculty of science and technology at New University of Lisbon, Portugal. UNIDEMI is the main research center which working on LARGe SCM. UNINOVA and NECE are other partners who are contributing to it.
A lean company means nearly zero inventories; a resilient company must have enough inventories to react to the effects of disruptions that may occur in a supply chain. These concepts seem to be contradictory . However, it would be ideal to have both systems working together in a company[1] . These facts advice for further research in production and supply chain management; lean and resilient concepts require to be modelled on a compatibility basis. LARGe SCM develops a deep understanding of interrelationships (conflicts and trade-offs[2]) across lean, agile, resilient and green supply chain[3] paradigms. This understanding is believed to be vital to turn these concepts really compatible. This achievement will provide an important contribution for a competitive and sustainable environment; its justification will be based on better “lean, agile, resilient and green production systems” at the company level, with implications at the overall supply chain level and its agents. LARGe SCM encompasses a variety of related topics such as methodology, characteristics [4], organizational system, Performance measurement[5][6] , human factors[7] , information system, and management integration model[8] .