Purpose: The purpose of this paper is finding the current state of research and identifies
high-potential area for future investigation in optimization in supply chain management.
Design/methodology/approach: In this paper we present Bibliometric and Network analysis
to examine current state research on optimization in supply chain management to identify
established and emergent research field for future investigation. The systematic research review
which we used in our study have not grasp or assess by other researchers on this topic. Firstly,
based on our methodology Bibliometric analysis began by identifying 1610 publications raised
from scientific journals, included literatures from 1994 to March of 2016. Secondly, we applied
PageRank algorithm in our data for citation analysis to indicate the significance of a publication.
Thirdly, the topological decision variables analysis is done based on Louvain method for network
data clustering, for this proposes we used the rigorous tools.
Finding: Based on our Network analysis result, the optimization in supply chain management
research can be divided into four clusters/modules that introduced fundamental skill, knowledge,
theory, application and method.
Research limitations/implications: We presented some limitation in our research in some
fields which could allow new researchers and practitioners conduct the future research to grow up
in different dimensions.
Practical implications: Practitioners or policy maker usually are not familiar with these type
researches so this is why mush of these survey remain in theatrical and conceptual. Future
investigation needs to play in practical application domain instead stop merely in opinion.
Originality/value: Based on our research, the researchers have more attention to work in
conceptual analysis due to other fields but we believe that in facility location problem there many
remarkable rooms still exist for future research to development. We also contributed more details
in the papers.
