Supplier integration is considered a key managerial strategy for improving buyer performance. This study adopts a configurational approach to supplier integration, based on the interaction and ...complementarity between supply chain management practices. In this perspective, this study explores the impact of supplier integration and measures aimed at creating a fast supply network structure on buyer performance. This research also attempts to ascertain whether these practices can exert a synergic effect. After examining data from a sample of 186 manufacturing plants, we can conclude that while taken singly supplier integration and fast supply network structure practices have a markedly positive effect on the performance goals considered (i.e., efficiency, schedule attainment and flexibility); in addition, they interact to produce an additional synergic effect on efficiency and schedule attainment. The analyses also reveal that investing in FSNS or SI initiatives alone can be risky. On one hand, when companies fail to make any effort to structure their supply network in order to achieve fast lead times, the impact of supplier integration on efficiency and schedule attainment may be hindered and, in extreme cases, supplier integration might even have no impact at all. On the other hand, investing only in fast supply network structure initiatives, without striving to achieve an adequate level of supplier integration might well be useless: indeed, even detrimental to any improvement in performance. These findings provide useful guidelines for managers who must decide how to combine supplier integration and fast supply network structure initiatives in order to improve or maximize performance.
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► This study adopts a configurational view of supplier integration. ► It examines the impact of supplier integration and fast supply network structure practices on buyer’s performance. ► It analyzes the synergic effect between supplier integration and fast supply network structure practices. ► When companies invest to reduce lead times and integrate with suppliers, the positive impact on performance is amplified. ► The decision of not investing in one of these practices can hinder the positive impact of the other.
Purpose - This research intends to investigate whether there are synergies that a firm could or should exploit by simultaneously implementing customer and supplier integration. In particular, the aim ...is to analyze the impact of customer integration on efficiency, and the moderating role of supplier integration.Design methodology approach - This study analyzes data from a sample of 200 manufacturing plants. Two hypotheses are tested through a hierarchical regression analysis. Customer and supplier integration constructs consider items related to different aspects of the integration (e.g. sharing of production plans and customers' forecasts, feedback on performance, communication on quality considerations and design changes, joint quality improvement efforts, close contact, partnerships). The focus of the integration clearly extends beyond the dyad, as it includes the integration of focal operations upstream and downstream, with both suppliers and customers.Findings - Supplier integration positively moderates the relationship between customer integration and efficiency, whereas the analyses do not support the hypothesis that in general customer integration positively impacts on efficiency. They also reveal that, when supplier integration is at a low level, customer integration can even produce a reduction in efficiency.Practical implications - Efficiency performance optimization requires levering simultaneously on customer and supplier integration to foster their interaction, rather than investing and acting on customer integration only. In addition, before deciding whether to invest in customer integration, managers should ascertain the level of supplier integration, since it acts as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of customer integration.Originality value - Compared with previous studies investigating the main impact of customer and supplier integration on a company's performance, this research analyzes a model that considers the interaction effect between these integration strategies. This provides a number of original implications for the interpretation of the relationship between customer and supplier integration and efficiency.
► Supply chain integration is beneficial to improve firm’s responsiveness. ► Both external and internal integration improve firms’ responsiveness. ► International suppliers positively moderates the ...impact of EI on responsiveness. ► International suppliers does not moderate the impact of II on responsiveness. ► The study contributes to the growing contingency research stream in SCM.
This study reveals that in supply networks both external and internal integration practices have a significant and positive impact on responsiveness. The use of an international supplier network acts as a contingency factor on the relationship between external integration practices and responsiveness, as in an international context the effect on performance is amplified. Conversely, the impact of internal integration on responsiveness is not moderated by the use of international suppliers. These evidences suggest managers how to properly tune the level of adoption of integration practices according to the degree of supplier network internationalization.
Fashion companies are extremely sensitive to the new challenge emerging from recent sustainability scandals. Existing literature has debated sustainability extensively by considering practices of ...sustainability that companies should apply. However, little research has focused on the design of a proper sustainability roadmap from a supply chain (SC) perspective to address the steps involved in implementing sustainability practices. The objective of this study is to design a sustainability roadmap for fashion companies. Based on case studies of three tiers of three fashion SCs as an empirical basis, social and environmental sustainability practices were grouped into a five-step roadmap. The main result of the paper is a five-step roadmap, characterised in terms of practices and main goal. The roadmap is then discussed in terms of possible paths of developing, in terms of evolution within a step and among different steps.
Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a key process that improves integration and communication between business functions and aligns the plans of a company into one integrated set of plans. This ...article focuses on the so-called S&OP 'maturity models', which describe the successive stages in the advancement of S&OP process according to a precise set of dimensions. These models are specifically thought to plan the transitions towards advanced stages, rather than to provide guidance on how to execute them. This paper aims to address this research gap by investigating how the dimensions evolve and interact during the execution of the transition between two subsequent stages. Three case studies of S&OP transitions with different starting and destination maturity stages have been compared. The findings demonstrate that the degree of seriality vs. parallelism among actions on different S&OP dimensions during the transition depends on the evolution stage of S&OP process. The study sheds light on the dynamics among the dimensions during the different transitions and warns managers not to underestimate the criticality of the people and organisation dimension, whose importance grows as the maturity level increases.
Though most scholars recognise that supply chain integration (SCI) can contribute to improving operational performance, previous studies on the SCI-performance link showed mixed results and several ...questions on this issue remain still open. In line with a configurational perspective, this study investigates whether plants adopting multiple integration practices (i.e. full SCI adopters) perform better than plants implementing only some selected SCI practices (i.e. partial adopters) and plants which do not implement any SCI practice (i.e. non-adopters). In addition, it analyses whether partial adopters show a superior performance compared to non-adopters. Analyses based on a sample of 317 manufacturing plants reveal that full adopters perform better than non-adopters, in terms of quality, delivery, flexibility and efficiency. Among partial adopters, a particular SCI pattern, characterised by a high level of internal integration and supply chain planning, differs from non-adopters in terms of delivery, and shows results similar to full adopters in terms of quality and efficiency. More surprisingly, the other patterns of partial adopters do not significantly differ from non-adopters in any performance dimensions, and underperform full adopters in each performance. This suggests that in order to maximise SCI benefits companies should lever on multiple integration practices, and that in some cases focusing only on selected integration activities can be useless. A further interesting implication is that companies can cumulatively increase their operational performance towards a full exploitation of SCI benefits by following a certain sequence of SCI practices.
Just-in-time (JIT) practices are very useful to improve operational performance. These practices, that represent the core of Lean management methodology, were firstly developed in Toyota, where the ...production is highly repetitive, and for many years researchers have thought that this methodology could be applied in contexts characterised by repetitive manufacturing systems only. Recently some authors have refuted this view, providing empirical evidence that JIT practices can be successfully implemented also in non-repetitive contexts. However, this evidence came from descriptive and anecdotal case studies, whereas in the literature, studies based on large sample lack, which analyse JIT impact on performance at varying degrees of repetitiveness. This paper aims at investigating the impact of JIT on efficiency and responsiveness performance, and the moderating effects on these relationships of some pivotal characteristics of non-repetitive manufacturing contexts, i.e. product customisation and demand variability. A questionnaire-based international survey was used to investigate the research questions. Data from a sample of 244 plants were analysed using a structural equation modelling (SEM) procedure. The analyses demonstrate that product customisation does not significantly moderate the impact of JIT on performance. Instead demand variability negatively moderates the relationship between JIT and responsiveness, whereas it does not significantly moderate the relationship between JIT and efficiency.
Lean management (LM) is a managerial approach for improving processes based on a complex system of interrelated socio-technical practices. Recently, debate has centered on the role of organizational ...culture (OC) in LM. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by examining whether plants that successfully implement LM are characterized by a specific OC profile and extensively adopt soft LM practices. Data were analyzed from the High Performance Manufacturing (HPM) project dataset using a multi-group approach. The results revealed that a specific OC profile characterizes successful lean plants; in particular, when compared to unsuccessful lean plants, they show a higher institutional collectivism, future orientation, a humane orientation, and a lower level of assertiveness. While a high level of institutional collectivism, future orientation, and humane orientation are common features of high performers in general, a low level of assertiveness is typical only of successful lean plants. In addition, successful lean plants use soft LM practices more extensively than unsuccessful lean plants (i.e., lean practices concerning people and relations, such as small group problem solving, employees’ training to perform multiple tasks, supplier partnerships, customer involvement, and continuous improvement), while they do not differ significantly in terms of hard LM practices (i.e., lean technical and analytical tools). For managers, the results indicate that, in order to implement LM successfully, it is fundamental to go beyond LM technicalities by adopting soft practices and nurturing the development of an appropriate OC profile.
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•Successful lean plants are characterized by a specific organizational culture.•Hard lean practices are order-qualifier activities for lean plants.•Soft lean practices should be considered as strategic order-winner factors.•Greater use of soft (rather than hard) LM practices differentiates successful lean plants.
In recent years there has been increased interest in supply chain (SC) collaboration, as a process that promotes inter-company co-operation in different business areas. This paper focuses on ...collaborative planning initiatives adopted to support demand and supply planning in supply networks. Since companies implement several different forms of collaborative planning initiatives, this paper intends to examine the relevant contingency effects that lead firms to choose a precise collaborative planning initiative. Ten cases were analysed to investigate the research question. Results found indicate that specific contextual conditions - i.e. goals of the collaboration, demand elasticity, product diversity and supply network spatial complexity - can affect the level of the collaboration in collaborative planning initiatives. Three different levels of collaboration are identified (i.e. communication, limited collaboration and full collaboration) - depending on the level of integration (i.e. whether companies simply exchange data/information, or synchronise and jointly decide their plans) and multiplexity (i.e. the number of business areas involved in the collaboration). It emerges that, while the goals of the collaboration influence the level of integration between companies; the elasticity of demand can determine the level of multiplexity. Furthermore, the research found that product diversity (i.e. whether companies sell different products) and a high supply network spatial complexity could limit the level of multiplexity in the collaboration.
Lean management (LM) has attracted the interest of scientists and practitioners since 1990, when Womack et al. (Womack, J.P., Jones, D.T. and Roos, D. (1990). The Machine that Changed the World. New ...York, NY: Rawson Associates) popularized the Japanese manufacturing approach aimed at eliminating waste to improve operational performance and customer satisfaction. Over the years, the lean concept has evolved becoming a managerial paradigm applicable to different sectors and processes with impressive results. This heterogeneity of implementations and settings makes the recent LM literature diverse and fragmented, and an extensive analysis of the latest contributions on this field is lacking. To address this gap, the authors propose a systematic literature review (SLR) of 240 articles published in 25 peer‐reviewed academic journals from January 2003 to December 2015. The purpose is to analyse the recent trends in this area and to provide a framework that organizes lean researched issues into mature, intermediate and nascent, based on their position in the research life cycle. Starting from the gaps that the SLR highlights, the authors suggest conducting lean research in the following directions: (a) grounding lean studies on existing managerial theories; (b) addressing service settings such as banking/finance, public sector and education; (c) exploring the role of national culture through cross‐country comparisons; (d) defining and conceptualizing ‘lean‐x’ processes; (e) understanding the relationships between lean and safety/environmental issues, and (f) unveiling the effects on social outcomes. Finally, the proposed framework helps scholars find issues not sufficiently explored that require theory‐building research (to move from nascent to intermediate) or theory‐testing research (to move from intermediate to mature).
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