A Comparative Study of Green Supply Chain Management Practices in Indian, Japanese and Chinese Companies

--Lokesh Vijayvargy and Gopal Agarwal

This paper aims to introduce and compare the environmental issue, Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) and its practice in large companies of India, Japan and China by examining 121 Indian organizations for their involvement in GSCM. Along with this, performance improvement in terms of GSCM for Indian companies relative to Japanese and Chinese companies is also analyzed. The paper focuses on various GSCM factors like internal environmental management, green purchasing, customer cooperation with environmental considerations, eco design and investment recovery, and company performance in terms of environmental performance, operational performance, and financial performance. The comparative analysis reveals that Indian organizations fare quite well in implementing GSCM. In segments like internal environmental management and investment recovery, Indian companies have made significant improvement. Further, Indian organizations perform consistently well even at initial stages of GSCM implementation. The analysis also reveals that GSCM efforts have resulted in significant environmental and operational performance and moderate financial performance for Indian organizations. In short, India is doing better than China, and relative to Japanese companies, Indian organizations are competing in some segments while lagging behind in others.

© 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Adoption of Supply Chain Management Strategies as a Response to Bull Whip Effect: From the Perspective of Indian Retailers

-- Tapan K Panda and Prashant K Mohanty

The concept of bull whip effect remains a critical issue in the supply chain of products in global market. A small variance in the demands of the downstream end-customers may cause dramatic variance in the procurement volumes of upstream suppliers via the bull whip effect under the condition that the distortions of demand-related information exist among the members of a supply chain (Lee et al., 1997; and Metters, 1997). There are various causes for the bull whip effect. The prominent ones include lack of forecast updating, poor level of order batching, frequent price fluctuations and shortage gaming. As a result, there is a chance of excess inventory, poor level of customer service and improper sales management, imprudent capacity panning, high cost of transportation and longer production lead times (Lee et al., 1997; Metters, 1997; Fransoo and Wouters, 2000; and Towill, 2005). There are a large number of retailers in India, as Indian retailing is mainly unorganized and small shops are around every corner of the country. This research is the end result of a survey conducted among Indian retailers on their SCM practices in counter-handling the bull whip effect. Application of SCM practices in these small, unorganized retail stores will increase profitability by lowering inventory carrying cost and increase their efficiency. The researchers compare the differences in perception of Small Retail Outlets (SRO) and Medium Retail Outlets (MRO). It is observed that motivation to participate in a supply chain network is comparatively lower among small retailers. As the size of their business grows over a period of time and they attain the status of an MRO, their trust and commitment to share information increases. The findings of this research will help the companies to effectively counteract the negative perceptions among retailers about SCM practices by identifying the underlying causes.

© 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Backend Processes and Operational Issues: A Quick Scan Audit of the Inventory Management System Followed at Tata Croma Stores

--Anita Kumar and Seamus O’Reilly

As India attracts more FDI in retail and opens its doors to the multinational giants, organized retailing across various sectors is bound to grow in the coming decade. Although a retailer’s real litmus test is the “customer satisfaction level with in-store shopping experience”, the importance of efficient backend operations, in particular, inventory management, cannot be denied. This study uses in-depth case study and action research methodology to map the inventory management process from stock inwards to stock outwards, identifies the gaps in the inventory management and operations process adopted in three Delhi-based Tata Croma Stores, and offers suggestions accordingly. It is observed that in-store inventory storage and goods outwards process are the two key areas that require improvements across all sections of the stores. The focus of the senior management is more on improving front-end operations and maintaining high customer service levels. As a result, backend operations display sub-optimal efficiencies. One strong reason for non-compliance is ‘strategy deployment’ gap. This study fulfils the dual imperatives of action research. At practice level, it can help the managers to ensure the smooth flow and functioning of the inventory in the retail stores. At the same time, it provides insights into the challenges faced by the emergent organized retail in India. This is one of the early studies to conduct an audit of a consumer electronics retail company and highlight its backend inventory management and operations problems.

© 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Supply Chain Practices for Complexity in Healthcare: A Service-Dominant Logic View

-- Samyadip Chakraborty and David D Dobrzykowski

Supply chain management has proven effective in other industries, but healthcare has found its adoption to be challenging and the reason behind it can largely be attributed to the level of complexity involved in the network. ‘Complexity’ has become a dominant feature of the lexicon of today’s supply chain management field, thereby making complexity management a key area of managerial consideration. This paper, in the context of hospital supply chain network, conceptualizes complexity dimensions as quality of relationship, volume and frequency of interactions in the network, number of elements, degree of differentiation among the actors in the network, and extent of interrelationships among network elements. The study investigates the influence of hospital supply-base complexity and customer-base complexity on key Supply Chain Practices (SCPs) using Prahalad and Ramaswamy’s (2004) Dialogue-Access-Risk Benefits-Transparency (DART) framework, linking it to dynamic capabilities literature from the value co-creation perspective, using the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) lens.

© 2013 IUP. All Rights Reserved.