Companies across different sectors increasingly suffer from vulnerability in their value chains. Quality problems, material shortages, or price fluctuations as well as more and more public reports about social, environmental or legal compliance issues associated with a company's name require top management attention.

Problems usually arise deep within value chains. With procured material often accounting for 50-80% of cost of goods sold, companies have become highly dependent on their suppliers. Despite growing efforts in supplier management, disruptions are on the rise. Upstream sub-suppliers are often the origin of problems, making companies realize the relevance of upstream value chains beyond their direct suppliers pointing towards a multitude of sub-suppliers.

Existing supply chain management practices hardly allow controlling challenges upstream in the value chain, leaving key questions unaddressed:

Practitioners and management scholars from different parts of the world gather in the ISVC to develop new ways to better respond to the challenges of managing supply beyond direct suppliers, to transfer this new knowledge into practice with pilot projects, to create hands-on tools and to communicate with stakeholders and the greater public.