Supply Chain in the Digital Age: A Scientometric–Thematic Literature Review

Abstract

The digitization of logistics processes enables, among others, real-time data exchange, which is currently the driving force of the modern economy, as well as functioning supply chains. Digital transformation has been accelerated in recent years, primarily by the development of the Industry 4.0 concept. It is also perceived as a trend supporting the sustainable development of organizations and industries. The main research challenge was identifying current research directions related to the digitalization of supply chains. Therefore, this article aims to present the literature review results of the last five years (2018–2022) regarding the digitalization of supply chains. The research used the PRISMA method (The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses), and 127 articles were analyzed. On this basis, we proposed a two-level qualifications framework that includes eight core categories and sixteen subcategories. The main contributions of this work are as follows: providing a complete and up-to-date (last five years) literature review on supply chains in the digital age from a global perspective that summarizes the current state of the art in an integrated framework; and provides an indication of the two most significant challenges currently observed, which are interrelated. The first key challenge is the digital transformation of businesses and supply chains; the second is sustainable development, which focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals; reducing the complexity of the issue by providing structure and clarity (Identifying categories and subcategories as the mind map); and identifying research gaps that we will work on in the future. Based on the review, we indicate three identified research gaps: there is a lack of research assessing the use of digitalization to build supply chain resilience; there are no studies evaluating the risk of the negative impact of technologies and threats on relations integrating future supply chains; and there is a lack of research on the changing role of man in modern logistics systems.