1. Issues

The result of a long mutation, the term "flow management" is used to designate all kinds of techniques and means essential to the optimization of all activities, from sourcing from the supplier's supplier, to manufacturing, to delivery to the customer's customer.

In view of the stakes involved in economically controlling flows, this concern, which originated in the rationalism of the industrial world, has gradually spread to include all the players in a supply chain, from the supplier's supplier to the customer's customer.

From the earliest beginnings, when industrialists' ambitions were limited to managing inventory or, later, production, to the present day, the successive developments that have taken place deserve to be analyzed in order to understand the mechanisms implemented and the objectives pursued through these different techniques....