Development of electronic supply chain management strategy for food industry

Abstract

In the current era of communication and competition, companies should concentrate on their main abilities and resources with electronic concept to enhance a reliable priority and get a stronger position in market. In other words, the manufacturers make efforts to develop their qualifications, whilst electronic supply chain management (E-SCM) is used as the supportive tool for the companies' development and reaching their goals. The operation of E-SCM plays a vital role in market and management section which can positively influence the profit and operations of the companies. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of electronic supply chain integration management, supply chain risk management and competitive advantage through modelling the impact of the variables: production, distribution and procurement on the performance of food industries. The present research is based on the objective of the applied type and based on the nature and method of data collection; it is of the descriptive-correlation type. The study population of this research is the companies active in the food industry in Central Asia, from which a sample consisting of 211 companies was selected based on the Chu-Bentler method. Exploratory factor analysis method was used in this research due to the exploratory investigation of different indicators of the E-SCM variable. According to the results of exploratory factor analysis, SCM operations were grouped based on the three factors of procurement operations, production operations, and distribution operations, and the effect of these factors on the company’s performance using the structural equation modeling approach using the partial least squares method (PLS) was analyzed. The results indicate that the procurement operation does not have an effect on the company’s performance. Also, the research findings show that the production and distribution operations have a direct and positive effect on the company’s performance and improve the performance.