Supply Chain Management (SCM) is playing a significant role in improving
organizational performance which is the need of today's manufacturing industry. According to Sarodeet al. (2008), supply chain is an integrated process where the materials and
information flow both within and between business entities including suppliers,
manufacturers, distributors and customers (Figure 1). To meet the demand of the customer is the
ultimate goal of SCM. For a manufacturing company, it is to make the right product, for the
right customer, in the right amount and at the right time. For this purpose, a
carefully-designed supply chain is required. Beamon (1998) has provided a comprehensive review of
models and methods of supply chain design and analysis.
The competition is shifting from `firm versus firm' to `supply chain versus supply
chain', on the basis of which supply chain perspective can be predicted, for designing,
organizing, and executing the activities of SCM. SCM integrates suppliers, manufacturers,
distributors and customers through the use of information technology to meet the expectations of
the customers efficiently and effectively (Vonderembse, 2006). Therefore, it is desirable
to assess the company's performance. This paper presents a methodology that a
plant manager can use to select the vendor based on the type of outsourced components.
Adopting the methodology used by Saraph et
al. (1989) in the field of quality management and methodology used by Digalwar and Sangwan (2007) in the field of
world-class manufacturing, this paper attempts to identify and validate a set
of performance measures for vendor selection covering the domain of supply chain. The
data obtained from the industry is analyzed for reliability and validity by using a statistical
tool, SPSS ver.16, operating on Windows XP platform. |
