Abstract
The term collaborative supply chain or SCM is a social software package that promises inter-and intra-firm alignments and information sharing to assure outstanding performance of the whole. It involves integrating resources and automating transactions across traditional boundaries to build mutually benefiting competitive advantage. SCM in the digital age encompasses accessibility of internal activities and measurement metrics by external parties as well as optimization of processes for mutual improvement in customer service, and reduction of inventory level and associated cost; good business relationships built on trust and minimized selfishness; and long term flexibility and adaptability evidenced by co-creation of products along the value chain. Apparently, experience has shown too many firms avoid engagement in this extensive supply chain integration, perhaps for fear of breeding conflicts. The paper viewed the current practice of SCM by studying the experiences and insights of 108 managers/officers, drawn from eight indigenous firms. The benchmark for selection was that the subject must be directly involved in supply chain initiatives and case study interviews were used for the survey. The finding unravelled discrepancy between the ideals of theories of SCM and actual practice; no consensus about its meaning, multiple supply chain collaboration compounds the problem even the more, and most times it may be difficult to meet the laid down conditions. Firms easily embrace internal cross functional integration and shun inter-organizational integration, perhaps because they want to build unique competitive advantage. Therefore more orientations should be done to educate managers on the ideals of SCM, especially on the area of dissuading selfish maximization of profits.
Highlights
Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat reported that the main effects of the Internet is people learning to adapt to a world where everybody is connected, everyone contributes, and everyone is in zero distance from everyone else (Israel, 2007).The digital age is right here; everything is revolutionized
The latter builds trusted relationship between parties and competitive advantage because the network effects of best practices are shared from the exchange of accurate and up-to-date information. The former viewed collaboration in terms of connoting some measure of social software involving mutual engagement and relationship building. It encompasses accessibility of internal activities and metrics by external parties as well as optimization of processes for mutual improvement in customer service, and reduction of inventory level and associated cost (Chou et al, 2004; Kehoe and Boughton, 2001); good business relationships built on trust and minimized selfishness even as perfect control over partners rarely exists (Scalet, 2001); and long term flexibility and adaptability evidenced by co-creation of products along the value chain (Sarkis and Sundarraj, 2000; van Hoek, 2001)
For O7 and O8, the logistics managers are better disposed to integration and collaboration because they build a front-office system; purchasing managers are sceptical, back-office system, hesitant to integrative endeavours, and more comfortable with adversary practices, and the manufacturing managers appear on the fence, often responding more to the ideals of front-office than to back-office systems
Summary
Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat reported that the main effects of the Internet is people learning to adapt to a world where everybody is connected, everyone contributes, and everyone is in zero distance (or close enough) from everyone else (Israel, 2007). The digital age is right here; everything is revolutionized. Has it changed and/or reshaped how the entire enterprise communities communicate and conduct businesses but how the supply chains are operated and managed. Implicit is that advances in IT are endless (Awa, 2003); they have currently helped supply chains to link their activities into networks enabling them to communicate, collaborate and co-operate through Internet connection (Cook, 2008; Mason et al, 2008). Organizations have relentlessly restructured and re-engineered their processes (Fawcett and Magnan, 2002) often by integrating resources and automating transactions across their traditional boundaries
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