collaboration

Secure Collaboration in Global Supply Chain Management

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 09:54:07 +0000

One of the fundamental problems in supply chain management in general is that of finding the right trade-offs between information sharing and keeping one’s distance towards potential competitors.

Zeng et al. did a literature review to collect some of the current insights on how to solve this problem.

Collaboration in product design and supply chain environment

Figure 1: Collaborative Product Development Process (Zeng et al., 2012)

Figure 1 shows a typical process from problem formulation up to delivery of the finished product. This process can be decomposed into: collaborative product development (CPD), design chain management (DCM) and supply chain management (SCM).

Collaboration conflicts

Several conflicts threaten the viability of the collaboration. These are all related to the information which is interchanged by the stakeholders.

Figure 2 shows the information flow.

Figure 2: Information Flow between Supply Chain Participants (Zeng et al., 2012)

This information can be divided into information to protect and information to share.
Figure 3 lists some of the relevant information.

Figure 3: Information to Protect and Information to Share (Zeng et al., 2012)

Securing collaboration

Figure 4 summarizes the problem analysis and the corresponding conclusions the authors draw.

Figure 4: Problem Analysis and Potential Solutions (Zeng et al., 2012)

The authors suggest and elaborate on four categories to secure collaboration:

Computer security and privacy technologies
Which consists of measures for access control and secure multi-party computation, where computations can be done on multiple datasets without revealing the underlying information. Furthermore privacy-preserving location-based services are summarized here.
Information partitioning
This contains the aspects of document classification and risk management.
Contract management
Partner relationship management
Here the authors include trust management and innovation capability and reverse engineering mitigation.

Last but not least figure 5 summarizes the current state of the art for the above mentioned problems and potential future research directions.

Figure 5: Future Research Directions on Secure Collaboration (Zeng et al., 2012)

Conclusion

The authors take the view of a computer scientist and find technical solutions (like secure multi-party computation) to fight supply chain problems.
One of the first things that came to my mind: “One cannot use technology to solve social problems.”
I do think that those measures should be pursued further in research as well as business. But the first steps have to be done by describing and defining their individual information buckets, by answering the strategic question: What information is core to our business and should be protected and what can be shared?

Reference:

Zeng, Y., Wang, L., Deng, X., Cao, X., & Khundker, N. (2012). Secure collaboration in global design and supply chain environment: Problem analysis and literature review Computers in Industry, 63 (6), 545-556 DOI: 10.1016/j.compind.2012.05.001

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Supply Chain Integration as major Value Driver

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:27:00 +0000

“Arcs of integration” is a concept developed by Frohlich and Westrook (2001) which describes the degree of integration of suppliers and customers within a Supply Chain.

Arcs of Supply Chain Integration (Frohlich and Westrook, 2001)

Methodology

This concept was developed within the scope of an international study on supply chain strategies. In this survey the authors used the mail survey research method to collect over responses form over 700 companies from all over the world (Asia/Pacific: 26%, Europe: 50%, North America: 14%, South America: 10%). Data was gathered not only on the supply chain integration of each respondent (eg. shared access to planning systems, shared production planning, knowledge of inventory levels), but also on performance parameters on each company (eg. market share, profitability, return on investment).

Strategies

There are two major tactics for supply chain integration:

coordination and integration of the forward physical flow of deliveries between suppliers, manufacturers and customers
backward coordination of information technologies and the low of data from the customer to the suppliers

The authors distilled five different strategies from the answers from the survey:

Inward-facing
for companies without much up- or downstream integration
Periphery-facing
only little integration in both directions (compared with other companies from the sample)
Supplier-facing
higher integration on the supply side, low integration on the customer side
Customer-facing
vis-versa to 3
Outward-facing
strong integration on the supply and customer side

Results

The results show that those companies applying an outward-facing strategy clearly recorded greater rates of performance compared to all other strategies.

Comparison of different Strategies for Supply Chain Integration (Frohlich and Westrook, 2001)

The authors draw the following conclusions from the data:

The outward-facing supply chain strategy is associated with the largest rates of significant performance improvements.
Manufacturers may be seriously jeopardizing performance by continuing to follow the inward-facing strategy.
Results for the supplier- and customer-facing strategies suggested that focusing on only the inbound or the outbound sides of the supply chain gained little more for manufacturers than adopting the periphery- or inward-facing strategies.
Over 40% of the sample was in the periphery-facing group. This suggests that periphery-facing may be the supply chain’s natural “equilibrium point” in terms of integration.

Conclusion

I can really recommend this article as a read and the first article I know which shows the connection between the degree of supply chain integration and performance levels.

Reference:

Frohlich, M., & Westbrook, R. (2001). Arcs of integration: an international study of supply chain strategies Journal of Operations Management, 19 (2), 185-200 DOI: 10.1016/S0272-6963(00)00055-3

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Internal

Identifying important Activities within the SCOR Processes

Daniel Dumke — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:07:00 +0000

The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model has been developed by the Supply Chain Council to provide a best-practice framework for supply chain management practices and processes with the goal to increase performance.

SCOR

The SCOR model consists of five major process categories: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver and Return

Starting from that best practice processes are defined up to level three.

Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR, SCC 2000)

Research Question

In 2004 Lockamy and McCormack published an exploratory study on the question

What are the most important supply chain management planning practices in the Plan, Source, Make, Deliver decision area that relate to supply chain performance?

Results

From literature and the questionnaires nine general practices are derived, that might influence performance.

Planning processes
Collaboration
Teaming
Process measures
Process credibility
Process integration
IT support
Process documentation
Process ownership

Using factor analysis the authors find that “Planning processes” and “Collaboration” is especially important for supply chain performance within all SCOR process categories. The aggregated results are shown in the following table.

Results Lockamy and McCormack (2004)

Reference:

Lockamy, A. III, & McCormack, K. (2004). Linking SCOR planning practices to supply chain performance: An exploratory study International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 24 (12), 1192-1218 DOI: 10.1108/01443570410569010

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Internal

Supply Chain Collaboration and Performance Effects

Daniel Dumke — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:47:00 +0000

Today I have been reading the paper by Zacharia, Nix and Lusch on Supply Chain Collaboration. The goal of the paper was to assess firm-level business performance outcomes of collaboration projects. This was done using a survey of nearly 500 supply chain professionals.

Model
Zacharia, Nix, Lusch (2009)

The authors suggest the following hypothesis:

H1: The greater the interdependence of knowledge and process, the higher the level of collaboration among the firms.
H2: The greater the level of supply chain partner insight, the higher the level of collaboration among the firms.
H3: The higher the level of collaboration, the better the operational outcomes.
H4: The higher the level of collaboration, the better the relational outcomes (trust, credibility and relationship effectiveness) between the collaborating firms.
H5: The better the operational outcomes, the better the relational outcomes between the collaborating firms.
H6: The better the operational outcomes, the better the performance at the firm level (organizational performance, asset utilization, competitive position, and profit).
H7: The better the relational outcomes, the better the performance at the firm level (organizational performance, asset utilization, competitive position, and profit).

Implications

After conducting the survey all hypothesis are accepted (0,001 and 0,01 levels). These results imply that a) collaboration can lead to more effective solutions by joining forces (resource based view), furthermore, b) understanding of the collaboration partner is key to a successful collaboration. c) Collaboration projects can be challenging and firms are sometimes not willing to set aside the necessary resources. d) Improvements of operational and relational outcomes of a collaboration project lead to better business performance.

Conclusion

The paper closes a gap which it desires to address: how does collaboration affect the individual firm? But it also leaves some for further research. Before reading I would have expected a greater focus on the quantitative evaluation of the business performance side. The study clearly supports the view that collaboration is good for the business performance of the individual firm, but the method used is too qualitative and subjective to derive the key influence factors for improving business performance by collaboration.

Reference:

Zacharia, Z., Nix, N. W., & Lusch, R. F. (2009). An Analysis of Supply Chain Collaborations and their Effect on Performance Outcomes Journal of Business Logistics, 30 (2), 101-123

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collaboration

Secure Collaboration in Global Supply Chain Management

Collaboration in product design and supply chain environment

Collaboration conflicts

Securing collaboration

Conclusion

Supply Chain Integration as major Value Driver

Methodology

Strategies

Results

Conclusion

Identifying important Activities within the SCOR Processes

SCOR

Research Question

Results

Supply Chain Collaboration and Performance Effects

Model Zacharia, Nix, Lusch (2009)

Implications

Conclusion

Model
Zacharia, Nix, Lusch (2009)