Key Strategies for a Competitive Supply Chain

In this era of competitiveness, there is a growing need for supply chains also to become competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer’s expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. In the recent years, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature and researchers have tried to identify variables of supply chain competitiveness. This paper highlights some of the concepts of supply chain competitiveness and tries to identify select variables on the basis of literature review. Further, the paper tries to highlight the importance of the identified variables in the achievement of supply chain competitiveness. The aim is to explore the concept and to motivate researchers to further investigate the unexplored areas of this important subject domain.

Supply Chain Competitiveness: A Review of Select Enablers

In present days market environment, supply chains has to be competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer’s expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. Recently, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature. Various researchers and practitioners have tried to identify and implement enablers in supply chains which can bring competitiveness in the supply chains i.e. supply chain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select enablers for supply chain competitiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector using an integrated approach of literature review and exploratory interviews with eminent professionals from the supply chain area in various industries, academia and research. The aim of the paper is to highlight the important enablers in the area of supply chain competitiveness and suggest recommendations to the industry and managers of manufacturing supply chains with a view to encourage more efforts in this wider domain area.

A Strategy Based View of Supply Chain Competitiveness

In this era of competitiveness, there is a growing need for supply chains also to become competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer’s expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. In the recent years, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature. Various researchers and practitioners have tried to identify and implement strategies in supply chains which can bring competitiveness in the supply chains i.e. supply chain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select strategies for supply chain competitiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector using an integrated approach of literature review and exploratory interviews with eminent professionals from the supply chain area in various industries, academia and research. The aim of the paper is to highlight the important area of competitiveness in the supply chain and to suggest recommendations to the industry and managers of manufacturing sector.

A Conceptual Framework for Supply Chain Competitiveness

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of the concept of competitiveness in the supply chain and to present a conceptual framework for Supply Chain Competitiveness (SCC). The framework is based on supply chain activities, which are inputs, necessary for SCC and the benefits which are the outputs of SCC. A literature review is conducted on key supply chain competitiveness issues, its determinants, its various dimensions followed by exploration for SCC. Based on the insights gained, a conceptual framework for SCC is presented based on activities for SCC, SCC environment and outcomes of SCC. The information flow in the conceptual framework is bi-directional at all levels and the activities are interrelated in a global competitive environment. The activities include the activities of suppliers, manufacturers and distributors, giving more emphasis on manufacturers- activities. Further, implications of various factors such as economic, politicolegal, technical, socio-cultural, competition, demographic etc. are also highlighted. The SCC framework is an attempt to cover the relatively less explored area of supply chain competitiveness. It is expected that this work will further motivate researchers, academicians and practitioners to work in this area and offers conceptual help in providing a directions for supply chain competitiveness which leads to improvement in the supply chain and supply chain performance.