REVIEW article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Sustainable Supply Chain Management
A Critical Review of the SCOR Digital Standard (SCOR-DS): Conceptual Implications for Supply Chain Performance Measurement
Provisionally accepted
- Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Istanbul, Türkiye
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model has long served as a global framework for analyzing and improving supply chain performance. Its digital successor, the SCOR Digital Standard (SCOR-DS), introduced in 2019, incorporates dimensions of digital transformation, sustainability, and advanced performance management. This paper critically examines the evolution from SCOR to SCOR-DS, assessing its strengths, limitations, and implications for both academia and practice. Using a critical-conceptual review approach that integrates academic and practitioner sources, including the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM) materials and relevant gray literature, the study combines descriptive synthesis, evaluative critique, and conceptual development. The analysis reveals that while SCOR-DS expands the traditional framework to address digitalization and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) priorities, it remains underexplored in academic research and exhibits conceptual gaps, particularly in demand management, product design integration, and the specification of key performance indicators (KPIs). To address these limitations, the paper proposes an illustrative KPI framework to operationalize SCOR-DS processes and enhance their analytical depth. By bridging practitioner-driven evolution with academic conceptualization, this study provides one of the first scholarly assessments of SCOR-DS. It establishes a foundation for future empirical and theoretical research on digital supply chain performance management.
Keywords: Critical–conceptual review, Digitalsupply chains, key performance indicators (KPIs), SCOR Digital Standard (SCOR-DS), Supply chain frameworks, supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model, Supply chain performance measurement, Supply chain sustainability
Received: 16 Dec 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 TEYMOURIFAR. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aydin TEYMOURIFAR
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.