Implementing knowledge management in supply chain: Literature review

The current economic crisis combined with a hyper-competitive environment has developed a real need for optimization practices within supply chains. Realizing the importance of knowledge management (KM) in improving the supply chain (SC), knowledge management is a major enabler of supply chain management, and is a critical element in information intensive and multi-cultured enterprise environments [1]. The growing number of articles on application knowledge management in supply chain in the literature is an indication of the importance of this area and of its role in improving the competitiveness of an organization [2]. This paper summarizes several theoretical and methodological characteristics that have been developed recently to highlight the way in which knowledge management applications are proposed in the supply chain context. In particular, the paper focuses on three areas of research: Knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing and knowledge creation and learning.