During the last decade, two strategies -globalization and time-based competition -have fundamentally altered the way companies do business. Globalization has created a "borderless organization" in which production and distribution facilities and even the supply base is geographically dispersed while time-based competition (defined as the speed with which products are manufactured, delivered to market, and serviced) has led to exacting customer demands for a wide variety of products with short lead times.In such a complex environment of global scope and short product life cycles, the ability to manage global supply chains efficiently is considered as a vital source of competitive advantage. In this paper, we define supply chain as a network of production and distribution facilities that link material, information, and money flows, from raw material supply to customer delivery in order to deliver a product to the final customer (Jones and Riley 1985).A critical decision faced by supply chain managers is the optimal location of production facilities. This decision has a profound impact on firm competitiveness. In making this decision, the external factors described earlier -globalization and time-based competition -often impose opposing influences on the firm, and these influences are not readily apparent when the initial plant location decision is made. For example, a firm that sets up a manufacturing plant in a third world country to take advantage of lower labor costs may find its time-based performance eroded because of poor infrastructure or non-availability of skilled personnel. The location decision is thus a strategically important managerial challenge that significantly impacts the long-term performance of global firms, and in particular, long-term operational performance of global supply chains.Prior models reported in the literature to resolve the tradeoffs associated with the plant location decision fall into two distinct categories. The first set of models predominantly focuses on quantitative analyses based on assumed costs of land, labor and transport, scale economies, and other JOURNAL