Improving the Integration of Supply Chain for Successful Implementation of World Class Manufacturing by using IPA: Evidence from Electronic Home Appliance

Today, the organization and industries are facing with global competition. Organizations should manufacture their products in a world class level to become successful in global competition and they have to be more integrated at the level of organization partners as well as supply chain. In this article, World Class Manufacturing (WCM) factors have been identified by using fuzzy Delphi Method. Dimensions and components related to integrated supply chain have also been extracted from subject literatures. They include: internal integration, supplier integration and customer integration. Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) has been used to categorize and characterize the priorities related to improvement of supply chain integration (SCI) for achieving (WCM). We used opinions of 200 experts comprising managers and politicians of Iranian domestic appliance industry as well as research final model to identify optimal strategies for managing all factors. According to the outputs of IPA matrix, final ranking of all SCI factors were identified to help managers optimally allocate resources. Results show that having stable purchasing system with main suppliers, integrated system among internal departments, level of sharing information with suppliers and information sharing systems with customers are all considered as the most important factors to improve SCI for achieving WCM in the selected industr