One of the greatest paradigm changes in business management is that business units or individual organizations no longer compete as isolated units or single organizations anymore, but rather as supply chains. If each business unit of the supply chain is acting in a way to optimize its own value, there will be discontinuities at the interfaces and unnecessary costs will result. If an integrated view is taken instead, there may be opportunities in the supply chain where additional expense or time in one segment can save tremendous expense or time in another segment. This is the foundation of the supply chain competition logic. In this context, Supply Chain Management (SCM) has been recognized as a new major forefront for effective competition. This dissertation calls supply chain dynamic the way the business units that take part of the same supply chain are associated aiming at SCM. In this context, the goal of this dissertation is to present a model that systematizes the analysis of the relevant elements of the supply chains dynamics. These SCM relevant elements have implications that are common to the different supply chains that belong to the same industrial segment, and implications that are specific to the chains of the different products that belong to this segment. These elements analysis are done first in the automotive industry and then in selected supply chains of this industry responsible for the creation, production, and distribution of a luxurious compact sport model produced by a European Vehicle Manufacturer. The main contribuitions of this doctoral dissertation are: the elaboration of a method that enables the dynamic analysis of a supply chain under the SCM perspective; and its application to the supply chains of four plants of a vehicle manufacturer model in order to illustrate the methods use. Within the method s application it was possible to obtain and to analyze the dynamics of the four existenting chains for a given vehicle model. It was also possible to conclude that the chains present distinct developmental stages of SCM. The different acting forces in each chain influences the development of specific SCM capabilities in some chains and not in others. The same happens with the presence or absence of the SCM enablers in the different links of each chain s business processes.