Topics for an Procurement or Supply Chain essay

Currently, a lot is happening in the Supply Chain, hence there are plenty of topics. However, many topics are not really covered yet by academia, so finding resources in journals and books may be a challenge.

Here are couple I would personally love to investigate. Maybe you will find some of the topics as an article in the future.

  • The next-day delivery and the actual cost of this service vs increased satisfaction or sales.
  • Performance improvement in warehousing due to new technologies like voice picking or augmented reality (Google glass) etc.
  • Modern slavery in Supply chain.
  • Effect of trade wars / Brexit on a certain company or industry
  • Circular supply chains, and how sustainable and eco-friendly they really are
  • Digitalization in procurement. This is a wide topic, and you can investigate the process of digitalization in a company/industry. Secondly, you can analyze the effect of digitalization on the company or industry
  • Big data analytics: how does it impact Supply Chain efficiencies
  • Organic food supply Chain. Organic food is much more sensitive, and we cannot use chemicals to protect the food.
  • Electric cars Supply Chain. There are new materials used in the production of batteries, could be a very interesting research

Blockchain of course, but not sure how can it be backed up by academic research.

  • Maybe an interview with top x supply chain manager of the region about the new trends they are expecting and then a comparison with academic research.
  • Smart contracts. From what I know there is a couple of use cases already available, and they are very interesting for the Supply Chain. Also, a quick search revealed that there are already scholarly articles available that You will need to back up your thesis. However, the topic shall not be something like “Are smart contracts helping the Supply Chain?” Go deeper into the use cases and determine the pros and cons. This would be, in my opinion, a great paper.
  • Fraud/theft elimination using blockchain.
  • Traceability using blockchain
  • The standard “literature review” on Academic Blockchain papers

Not to forget COVID-19, with its impact on Supply Chains, whether disrupting the old ones or creating new.

Many things are happening, do not be shy. Find an interesting, new topic. This is a good start for a great grade.

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