KINGSTON, R.I. – April 25, 2025 – Whether it’s empty shelves at the grocery store or delayed holiday packages, disruptions in the flow of goods impact everyday life. But when shelves go bare, it’s not just goods that are missing—it can also signal a shortage of truck drivers, grounded aircrafts, or broken processes behind the scenes. What if our understanding of what “flows” through a supply chain has been too narrow all along?

That question sparked a major research effort by Muhammad Hasan Ashraf, a former doctoral student at the University of Rhode Island, and his advisor, Mehmet G. Yalcin, a research-active faculty of supply chain management in URI’s College of Business. Together, they examined the most foundational element in supply chain management: the concept of “flow.”

“One of our jobs as scholars is to try to ask questions that other folks aren’t asking, and to provide value by working to develop solutions based on what we learn,” said Yalcin. 

At its most basic level, “supply chain flows” refer to the forward and backward movement of products, materials, and finances through the supply chain. However, this conventional understanding is exactly what Ashraf and Yalcin challenged; arguing that it offers a constrained and suboptimal view. 

“We need these flows for the supply chains to operate,” says Ashraf, who is now a tenure-track faculty member at California State University Long Beach. “However, we felt like there was an opportunity following COVID-19 to expand boundaries and explore other flows that hadn’t been recognized before.”

The idea began to take shape while Ashraf was working on a separate project examining tensions in the U.S. logistics industry. As he observed the COVID-19 pandemic disrupt global supply chains, it became clear that the breakdown wasn’t solely due to disruption in the flow of materials, it was also a result of halted human movement. 

“While goods were sitting in warehouses and systems were still running, it was clear something else was missing,” says Ashraf. “That ‘something’ was people. We realized human flow is just as critical— and it was being completely overlooked.”

Ashraf brought this insight to Yalcin, questioning why human movement wasn’t formally recognized as a supply chain flow and whether other critical flows might be missing. 

While Yalcin already had a hunch about human flow through his prior work in humanitarian logistics, he realized this presented a golden opportunity to acknowledge and recognize human flow as essential (immigration, labor markets). To their surprise, they also found that the field of supply chain management had never actually defined what a “supply chain flow” is. 

“We had a shared passion for advancing supply chain theory,” says Ashraf. “And we realized that this question of ‘what is a flow?’—is where that work needs to begin.”

Under the supervision of Yalcin, Ashraf pursued this line of inquiry as part of his doctoral dissertation—work that is now published in The International Journal of Logistics Management. Their research introduces a new framework called SCFLOWS (see below), which redefines how supply chain flows are understood. 

Figure 1: SCFLOW framework (Ashraf et al, 2024)

To develop the framework, they employed a rigorous multi-method approach including in-depth interviews and other qualitative assessments with logistics professionals, supply chain scholars, and senior executives from the airline industry.

Through the framework, Ashraf and Yalcin were better able to define supply chain flows and expand the original concept. They were able to identify seven different dimensions of supply chain flow:

1.    Boundary – Defines the limits within the supply chain network.
2.    Location – Encompasses nodes, and links within the network.
3.    Components – Differentiates between resources, and elements. 
4.    Direction – Includes unidirectional, bidirectional and multidirectional flows.
5.    Activity – Covers movement/transfer, exchange, sharing, storing, and transforming.
6.    Occurrence – Addresses continuous, temporary, interrupted and seasonal flows.
7.    Impact – Evaluates the valuable or non-valuable impact of flows

Most notably, their research proposes two additional flows that have long been overlooked: human and capital equipment.

“When we shared the framework with airline executives, they helped us identify what was missing,” Ashraf explains. “Aircrafts were grounded not because of unavailable parts or faulty data—but because there were no pilots [human]. Similarly, cargo movement was stalled due to a shortage of trucks [capital equipment] and delivery drivers [human]. These are real, critical flows.”

Their work represents a significant step in building supply chain management theory by introducing new dimensions and flows. According to Yalcin, the framework has the potential to reshape how supply chain management is taught.

“These research studies—and this is important to note—end up in textbooks,” says Yalcin. “So, in 10 years what we’re looking at right now will probably end up being distilled into a supply chain textbook.”

In a world where empty shelves and delayed packages signal far more than missing goods, Ashraf and Yalcin’s work offers a timely and necessary shift in thinking. By broadening what we recognize as flowing through a supply chain, their work will help organizations better anticipate disruptions. 

 “Our goal is to help supply chain managers and organizations think more holistically.” says Ashraf. “If we can understand what really flows—and what needs to flow—for supply chains to work, we’re in a better position to make them resilient.”

In highlighting the utility of the framework, Yalcin adds “There is a supply chain in everything and as academics and managers we all are better equipped to describe, evaluate and also manage them with the SCFLOWS.”