Supply Chain Management and Hypercompetition

Firms nowadays face significant challenges in their operating environments, which have been characterised in two different ways. From a strategic management perspective these environments are in a state of hypercompetition while from a logistics or supply chain perspective these environments require market responsiveness predicated upon agile supply chains. However, firms must also rely on many interorganizational relationships to ensure efficient and effective movements within their supply chains. This paper discusses the relationships among these concepts and proposes a research framework combining aspects of the hypercompetition and responsiveness and agility viewpoints

Supply chain management resources, capabilities and execution

This paper identifies inter- and intra-organisational management resources that determine the level of execution of inter-firm alliance supply chain management (SCM). By drawing on network and resource-based view theories, a conceptual model proposes the effects of SCM resources and capabilities as influencing factors on SCM execution. The model was tested using survey data from studies conducted in two European supply chain environments. Variance-based structural equation modelling confirmed the hypothesised hierarchical order of three proposed antecedents: internal SCM resources affect joint SCM resources, which in turn influence collaborative SCM-related processes and finally SCM execution. An importance-performance analysis for both settings shows that providing and investing in internal SCM resources should be a priority when aiming to increase SCM execution. The theoretical contribution of this paper lies in confirming that the improvement of SCM execution follows a clear pathway featuring internal supply chain resources as one of the main drivers. The practical implications of this research include the development of a prioritisation list of measures that elevate SCM execution in the two country settings

Critical success criteria for B2B E-commerce systems in Chinese medical supply chain.

The paper presents an exploratory investigation to determine and prioritise the critical success criteria, which can measure and guide the successful application and performance improvement of business to business e-commerce system (BBECS) in a medical supply chain's selling and buying functions, in the context of global business expansion. The research reveals that the buying and the selling functions have different prioritisations on the majority of the determined critical success measuring criteria. These criteria are categorised into three Critical Success Measuring Criteria Groups, for the selling and the buying functions, respectively, guiding medical supply chain members in harnessing the full advantage of a BBECS. For the selling function, the top critical success measuring criteria are as follows: integrating information searching/transmission and application processes, ensuring the reliability and timeliness of technical support, ensuring recognition and acceptance of e-commerce processes, displaying the organisation's business focus and product/service provisions online, securing a large scale/amount of business transactions, adjusting production outputs and inventory levels and having more registered users than competitors do. The top critical success measuring criteria for the buying function are as follows: securing the establishment of business relationships between businesses, displaying the measures ensuring mutual trust and cooperation online, ensuring employees' recognition of the benefit of e-commerce in increasing revenue, ensuring the contribution to the development and realisation of corporate strategy, achieving cost reduction for the organisation, making the purchase of famous brand products available/doable, securing a large scale/amount of business transactions, and ensuring the attainability of products/services at a lower price

Business process management and supply chain collaboration: a critical comparison

The link between a firm and supply chain (SC) members has been recognised as one of the key issues for ensuring business success and achieving competitive advantage. Indeed, working across organisational boundaries is required to accomplish effective responses to customers’ needs. Our preliminary research confirmed that there are positive relationships between business process management (BPM), supply chain collaboration (SCC), collaborative advantage and organisational performance. This study is a step further and uses a multiple case design to illuminate the results and gain a greater understanding from extensive discussions about these relationships. By means of semi-structured interviews, the three main issues were identified as: (1) the link between BPM and organisational performance; (2) the link between BPM and SCC; and (3) the contextual factors and benefits achieved from working collaboratively with SC partners. The different scenarios of the link between BPM and SCC were developed in a taxonomy, and the case studies were used to illustrate the experience of intra- and inter-organisational practices in the developing economy of Thailand. The case studies’ results explain in depth that both BPM and SCC are important for improving organisational performance and competitiveness. BPM not only improves organisational performance directly, but also assists with collaborative activities that in turn help to improve internal capabilities. Additionally, the comparisons in issues relating to firm size, industry type, relationship closeness and relationship length were also included in this study

Development and Empirical Test of a Grocery Retail Instore Logistics Model

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a model of Instore Logistics for retail stores. The model attempted to give a picture of all logistics processes that are carried out within a retail outlet from an incoming dock to the check out. The model has afterwards been empirically validated by analyzing the Instore Logistics processes of dairy products in 200 stores in the Austrian grocery retail sector. The findings of the survey show typical problem areas within store operations and identify the impact of the final 50 metres in the store as a key factor impacting upon the success of retail business. The paper continues the work of Raman, DeHoratius & Ton (2001) and Cachon (2001) and the findings contribute to close the execution gap in retail operations

Value-adding Partnerships and Co-opetition Models in the Grocery Industry

Leading representatives of the European grocery industry formed the European Efficient Consumer Response (ECR-)Initiative in 1995. The goal of this strategic alliance is set to reengineer the way business is done in the industry by implementing cooperative strategies between retailer and manufacturer in order to fulfill consumer wishes better, faster and at less cost. ECR appears thereby in many facets, from a ‘simple’ dyadic value-adding partnership to a sophisticated form of co-opetition, where Supply Chain members have both relationship types – competition and cooperation – at the same time. Our paper discusses these issues first on theoretical bases and then presents empirical results of a comprehensive analysis within a selected European ECR-initiative showing the success factors of managing ECR-partnership relations

Implementing supply chain management in organizations

Book synopsis: The mastery of company-internal and cross-company value creation processes is a decisive competitive factor for companies. The articles compiled in this commemorative publication provide a well-founded overview of current research interests of outstanding scientists in logistics and supply chain management. Current and innovative concepts, theories and solutions are presented in an impressive manner. The spectrum is broad and includes, in addition to "traditional" topics from logistics and production, contributions to supply chain management and related topics. The book is aimed at lecturers and students in business administration with a focus on supply chain management, logistics and operations management, as well as specialists and executives in companies who are active in these areas