Keah Choon Tan

A framework of supply chain management literature

Over the past decade, the traditional purchasing and logistics functions have evolved into a broader strategic approach to materials and distribution management known as supply chain management. This research reviews the literature base and development of supply chain management from two separate paths that eventually merged into the modern era of a holistic and strategic approach to operations, materials and logistics management. In addition, this article attempts to clearly describe supply chain management since the literature is replete with buzzwords that address elements or stages of this new management philosophy. This article also discusses various supply chain management strategies and the conditions conducive to supply chain management. ( 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Supply chain management: a strategic perspective

Many leading firms in the USA have adopted an integrated strategic approach to purchasing and logistics management known as supply chain management. As the twenty‐first century begins, supply chain management has become a significant strategic tool for firms striving to improve quality, customer service and competitive success. This article surveyed senior managers in various industries to study the prevalent supply chain management and supplier evaluation practices. The study reduced these practices to a smaller set of constructs and related the constructs to firm performance. The results show that many constructs were correlated with firm performance and that some constructs were found to adversely affect performance.

Supply Chain Management: An Empirical Study of Its Impact on Performance

Total quality management, supply base management, customer driven corporate policy, and other elements of supply chain management are frequently cited as strategic options to achieve competitive success in the 1990s. However, attempts by companies to implement these options have not been universally successful and have in many cases failed to yield the desired results. This study presents details of a survey carried out to determine whether particular quality management, supply base management, and customer relations practices can impact corporate performance. In addition it examines the impact analyzing the competitive environment has on performance. Regression models identify several factors that directly and positively impact corporate performance. These include the extent to which companies analyze the strategies of competitors and determine future customer requirements, and the commitment they have to evaluating performance throughout the supply chain.

Buyer‐supplier relationships: The impact of supplier selection and buyer‐supplier engagement on relationship and firm performance

Purpose – To analyze the impact of supplier selection and buyer‐supplier engagement on the performance benefits attributable to buyer‐supplier relationships, and the effect of these benefits on broader measures of buyer performance.Design/methodology/approach – Analysis is conducted using a structural equation model using survey data.Findings – Results demonstrate the positive influence of engagement and supplier selection on relationship performance. They also demonstrate that the success of the relationship directly and positively affects buyer performance.Research limitations/implications – Additional analysis is required to examine whether the results hold for specific industry or purchase scenarios, and to identify other dimensions of the constructs of interest.Practical implications – Buyers should pay attention to selecting the right suppliers and developing the infrastructure that will enable successful buyer‐supplier relationships.Originality/value – The paper provides empirical evidence of the i...

Information sharing, buyer‐supplier relationships, and firm performance: A multi‐region analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of information sharing capability on buyer‐supplier relationships and firm performance. It is proposed that information sharing capability, the integration of a firms information/decision systems and business processes with those of supply chain partners, is an antecedent of collaborative buyer‐supplier relationships, defined in terms of supply chain and relationship architecture. Further, it is proposed that these relationships positively impact a firms market and financial performance.Design/methodology/approach – This research uses multiple linear regression to analyze a set of survey data from the USA, Europe and New Zealand.Findings – Results demonstrate positive relationships between information sharing capability and buyer‐supplier relationships, and between relationships and performance.Research limitations/implications – Information sharing capability and buyer‐supplier relationships are complex, multi dimensional constructs. While t...

Supply Chain Drivers that Foster the Development of Green Initiatives in an Emerging Economy

Purpose – Sustainability and environmental issues are among the most pressing concerns for modern humanity, governments and environmentally conscious business organizations. Green supply chain management has been acknowledged as a key factor to promote organizational sustainability. Green supply chain management is evolving into an important approach for organizations in emerging economies to manage their environmental responsibility. Yet, despite their importance for easing environmental degradation and providing economic benefits, study of the drivers that influence green supply chain initiatives in an emerging economy is still an under‐researched area. Using survey data collected from ISO 14001 certified organizations from Malaysia, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the drivers that motivate firms to adopt green supply chain management can be measured by a second‐order construct related to the implementation of the firms green supply chain initiatives.Design/methodology/approach – Structura...

A Structural Equation Model of New Product Design and Development

This research uses structural equation modeling to analyze the effects of supplier assessment, Just-In-Time, and quality management strategies on new product design and development. A survey of senior managers who are members of the American Production and Inventory Control Society in the United States was used to test the relationships between the constructs in the model. In general, the survey results supported the proposed structural equation model. The data showed that supplier assessment and Just-In-Time strategies were correlated and affected the quality management strategy used, which in turn influenced the new product design and development strategy. The data also showed that the Just-In-Time strategy directly influenced the new product design and development strategy.

The impact of external institutional drivers and internal strategy on environmental performance

Purpose – Environmental sustainability literature provides extensive evidence that business organizations, societies, and governments all have a stake in green operations management. Despite the importance of a firms effort to alleviate environmental damages and provide economic benefits to organizations, little is known about the external institutional drivers that enable firms to adopt internal proactive environmental strategies. This purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which an internal proactive environmental strategy (eco‐design) and external institutional drivers (government regulations and incentives, customer pressures) motivate firms to adopt eco‐deigns that influence environmental performance.Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses are tested using data from a sample of 132 EMS ISO 14001 – certified manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Specifically, this study uses survey data to validate the major premises in our proposed model.Findings – Empirical tests of the hypotheses with struc...

Attitudes of US and European managers to supplier selection and assessment and implications for business performance

As competition motivates firms to exploit their core competencies, outsourcing takes on greater significance. Increased reliance on supplier capabilities and technologies, however, increases the impact that supplier selection and assessment can have on the buying firm and in particular, its performance. While prior studies of supply management provide considerable evidence of the criteria used by firms to select and assess suppliers, they provide little insight into the relationships between selection and assessment and the buying firms performance. This research describes an empirical study of attitudes towards supplier selection and assessment of American and European companies and their impact on business performance. Results illustrate that while both American and European managers consider objective selection and assessment criteria such as cost and price to be more important than subjective criteria such as supplier commitment, it is the more subjective criteria that have a greater impact on firm performance. Moreover, while for American companies there are strong relationships between attitudes towards supply management and performance, similar relationships do not appear to hold for European companies.

A comparison of four methods for minimizing total tardiness on a single processor with sequence dependent setup times

Much of the research on operations scheduling problems has either ignored setup times or assumed that setup times on each machine are independent of the job sequence. This paper considers the problem of scheduling a single machine for minimizing total tardiness in a sequence dependent setup environment. The comparative performance of branch-and-bound, genetic search, simulated annealing and random-start pairwise interchange was evaluated in this problem setting. The experimental results suggest that simulated annealing and random-start pairwise interchange are viable solution techniques that can yield good solutions to a large combinatorial problem when considering the tardiness objective with sequence dependent setup times. However, branch-and-bound may be the preferred solution technique in solving smaller problems, and it is the only solution technique tested that will confirm an optimum solution has been reached. The methods considered in this research offer promise to deal with a class of scheduling problems, which have been considered difficult by both researchers and practitioners.