A capability approach to evaluate supply chain flexibility

Abstract

Supply chain flexibility is increasingly important for gaining and maintaining a decisive competitive edge. Companies still remain in need of a powerful approach that allows an ongoing and feasible evaluation of supply chain flexibility to develop this ability in a targeted way. The key findings of our paper can be summarized to the extent that we introduce a new approach to methodically assess a supply chain׳s flexibility based on appropriate key figures. Additionally, we further proof the functional capability of our newly developed evaluation approach. This evaluation is performed by investigating the process chain along the dyadic supplier–buyer relationships in terms of order lead time and cost deviations related to order-processing. Thus, a modified bivariate unilateral process capability analysis will be applied to calculate process capability measures of these supply chain processes. The capability measures indicate whether the supply chain processes investigated are capable of managing changing conditions in a timely and cost-efficient manner.