Supply chain management: Issues in the New Era of Collaboration and Competition

Citation

Ramanathan, R. (2008), "Supply chain management: Issues in the New Era of Collaboration and Competition", Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 149-150. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmtm.2008.19.1.149.1

Supply Chain Management (SCM) has been the subject of study for a long time, but there has been a renewed interest on the extent of collaboration among supply chain partners, especially after the incredible advances in information technology that have taken place since the early 1990. This book provides a topical collection of articles on SCM viewed from the perspective of collaboration among supply chain partners.

The book is organized into 14 chapters, written by prominent researchers from across the globe. These chapters are grouped into four sections.

The first section focuses on the impacts and challenges of SCM, and contains four chapters. The first, written by the editors themselves, forms the bulk of the background material needed to appreciate the remaining chapters. It provides a good overview of SCM literature and introduces the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model. Internet and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly playing significant roles in enhancing collaboration among supply chain partners and also to facilitate special forms of organizations, usually called the virtual organization. A case study from the UK, addressing the barriers to introducing virtual enterprise networks is presented next. SCM issues in the agricultural industry are the subject of Chapter 3, which discusses the nature of information flow and cooperation in a New Zealand sheep meat supply chain. Chapter 4 addresses virtual supply chain integration using ICT. This is an interesting chapter in which the role of virtual integration in improving supply chain coordination is examined quantitatively, using a survey from large and medium sized manufacturing firms in Taiwan. Several hypotheses are developed and tested using data from the survey, concluding that virtual integration is an effective approach under certain conditions.

The second section deals with participants' roles in SCM and contains three chapters. Barriers are again considered in Chapter 5, in the form of various propositions involving trust and transparency in the context of “netchains” (both chain and networks) in the Dutch egg sector. The next chapter is more conceptual, examining an integrated framework for global SCM. Collaboration among supply chain channel members can be greatly facilitated by the strategic use of information technology. This aspect is further explored in Chapter 7, which describes various technologies presently practiced for enabling collaboration.

The third section contains four chapters considering various implementation aspects of integration. Process issues involved in the adoption of inter‐organisational SCM initiatives are discussed in Chapter 8 using a case study from the Australian grocery sector. Processes through which information is used to manage collaboration among supply chain partners are discussed in Chapter 9 using a quantitative survey of Australian food processors and a case study. Responses from participants in workshops for experienced SCM practitioners are used in Chapter 10 explore the applicability of soft systems methodology to SCM. The last chapter of this section, which could fit as well into the next section, deals with security issues related to information sharing among SCM partners in the context of e‐enterprises. A case study of a leading US company is used to explain the security concerns in B2B supply chain interactions.

The final section considers performance, control and risk issues and contains three chapters. Measuring the performance of supply chains is much more difficult than performance measurement of individual firms. Some conceptual approaches to measuring performances of supply chains are presented in Chapter 12. Since, the performance of supply chain depends on the performances of individual members, there is a risk to the entire chain when a single partner defects from common supply chain agreements. This risk is mathematically studied using a game‐theoretic model in Chapter 13. Novel ideas of smart integrated “eoperations” that are emerging in the Norwegian oil and gas industry are described in the final chapter. The factors that stimulate such a development (such as rapid improvements in application technology and ICT) and the expected commercial benefits are highlighted along with associated challenges, including those relating to human and organizational interfaces.

The book provides details of practical studies carried out in various parts of the globe (Europe, Australia, Asia and America) and in different industrial sectors (agriculture, oil and gas, food, forestry, etc.). This is not a basic text – most of the chapters require the reader to have an understanding of the concepts of SCM and collaborative partnerships, but the first chapter provides a useful introduction. There is a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches, though a few more quantitative studies (such as optimization models) would have made the book more interesting to the operations research specialist, the balance is correct for the general reader, although the quantitative chapters do require a background knowledge of statistics and game theory. In summary, the authors have provide a collection of well‐written papers of interest to graduate students, academics and industry practitioners interested in collaborative supply chains. However, it is priced in a range which is likely to deter an individual buyer.