Agile and Lean Supply Chain: Research Trends (2017-2021)

Abstract

Today, the two terms - agility and leanness are frequently encountered in the literature due to their effects on industrial sectors. They are the two basic paradigms of the businesses that help them to build strategies and to gain a competitive advantage. This study aimed to explore the emerging research topics and the main research trends within agile and lean supply chain (SC) paradigms in recent years and to explore the interrelationships between them. A word co-occurrence analysis technique was adopted in this study. A data set of 526 publications, obtained from the Web of Science database, had been analyzed. The findings show that many topics such as SC strategy, green SC, and SC agility are present since 2018. Besides, the topics such as SC design, collaboration, cold SC, lean and agile SC, and SC risk management were emerging topics. The most common research areas revealed are; environmental risks in the agile SC, combining lean SC with agile SC, leagile SC strategies, SC risk management, and agility in SC integration.