Supply Chain Management in Content Distribution for Malaysian Chinese Media Services in Southeast Asia

Contributors

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a not-for-profit social enterprise that provides a lunch program to schools across India. With funding and logistical support from local and state governments, Akshaya Patra seeks to eradicate malnutrition in 1.2 million underprivileged children (Garg et al. in Cases on supply chain and distribution management: issues and principles. IGI Global, Pennsylvania 2012). As a model social enterprise that relies on software applications and automated mechanisms, Akshaya Patra’s kitchen facilities mirror pioneering technologies, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and Microsoft Dynamics. Two-fold distribution policies sit at the heart of its supply chains to counteract inefficiencies in mass meal production and delivery (Somashekar and Balasubramanian in Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra use disruptive technologies to enhance efficiency in mid-day meal program for school children. Retrieved from https://www.akshayapatra.org/accenture-labs-and-akshaya-patra-use-disruptive-technologies-to-enhance-efficiency-in-midday-meal-program-for-school-children 2017). This corporate social responsibility (CSR) ethos creates a nexus between collective grassroots action, the traditional values of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and a more progressive India. The Foundation’s mission is to feed 5 million children by 2020 (Garg et al. in Cases on supply chain and distribution management: issues and principles. IGI Global, Pennsylvania 2012).

Supply Chain and Supply chain Management have played a significant role in corporate efficiency and have attracted the attention of numerous academicians over the last few years. Academic literature review discloses an important spurt in research in practice and theory of Supply Chain (SC) and Supply Chain Management (SCM). Connecting and informing on Supply Chain, Supply Chain Management and distribution Management characteristics have contributed to the Supply Chain integration. This integration has generated the approach of extended corporate and the supply chain is nowadays manifested as the cooperative supply chain across intercorporate borders to increase the value across of the whole supply chain. This paper seeks to introduce supply Chain and Supply Chain Management. A Supply Chain and Supply Chain Management definition, theoretical, practical and measurement analysis are proposed. Several randomly selected refereed academic articles were methodically analyzed. A number of key findings have arisen: the field is a comparatively new one; several researchers have different perception of the discipline; the consensus is lacking on the definition of the terms: the Supply Chain and Supply Chain Management are widely defined; contextual focus is mainly on the manufacturing industry; research methods employed are mostly theoretical conceptual; the findings also suggest that undertaking a theory view could make important contributions towards defining the scope of supply chains. The literature review in this research proposes critical lexicons that are mostly used in academic dissertation. These notions can be beneficial for academician or organizations that are involve in Supply Chain Management business.

Contributors

Roberto Baldacci (“ An Exact Algorithm for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows ”) is a researcher in operations research at the Department of Electronics, Computer Science, and Systems (DEIS) of the University of Bologna, Italy. His major research interests are in the areas of transportation planning, logistics and distribution, and the solution of vehicle routing and scheduling problems over street networks. His research activities are in the theory and applications of mathematical programming including the design of new heuristic and exact methods for solving routing and location problems. Enrico Bartolini (“ An Exact Algorithm for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows ”) holds a postdoctoral position at the University of Bologna. His research activity concerns the study and development of heuristic and exact algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems with applications in logistics and distribution systems, in particular network design problems and some generalizations of the vehicle routing problem. Saif Benjaafar (“ Optimal Control of an Assembly System with Multiple Stages and Multiple Demand Classes ”) is professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he is also founding and current director of the Industrial & Systems Engineering Program, director of the Center for Supply Chain Research, and a faculty scholar with the Center for Transportation Studies. He was a Distinguished Senior Visiting Scientist at Honeywell Laboratories and a visiting professor at universities in France, Belgium, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore. His research is in the areas of supply chain management, service and manufacturing operations, and production and inventory systems, with a current focus on sustainability and environmental modeling. He serves on the editorial board of several journals including Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Naval Research Logistics, and IIE Transactions. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). Dimitris Bertsimas (“ Performance Analysis of Queueing Networks via Robust Optimization ”) is the Boeing Professor of Operations Research and codirector of the Operations Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This research is part of his work in the last decade on robust optimization for optimization and performance analysis of stochastic systems. Atul Bhandari (“ Revenue Management with Bargaining ”) is manager of the Algorithms Team at SmartOps. He supervises the design and development of enterprise inventory optimization algorithms, supervises modeling and analysis support for sales and implementation efforts, and leads educational sessions. He earned a Ph.D. in operations research from the Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business. Sushil Bikhchandani (“ An Ascending Vickrey Auction for Selling Bases of a Matroid ”) is professor of decisions, operations, and technology management at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is interested in the economics of incentives and its application to auctions, market institutions, and social learning. J. Paul Brooks (“ Support Vector Machines with the Ramp Loss and the Hard Margin Loss ”) is an assistant professor of operations research in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research and a fellow of the Center for Study of Biological Complexity, Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently secretary/treasurer of the INFORMS Section on Data Mining. His research interests include the design of optimization-based algorithms for data mining and their application to biomedical data. He is also interested in applications of optimization to models of cellular metabolism and network design problems. Sungyong Choi (“ A Multiproduct Risk-Averse Newsvendor with Law-Invariant Coherent Measures of Risk ”) is an instructor in the Department of Management Science and Information Systems at Rutgers University. Dr. Choi's research interests are in the area of stochastic modeling and its application in supply chain management. Milind Dawande (“ Production Planning with Patterns: A Problem from Processed Food Manufacturing ” and “ Quantifying the Impact of Layout on Productivity: An Analysis from Robotic-Cell Manufacturing ”) is professor and area coordinator of operations management at the School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests are in discrete optimization problems in manufacturing and operations. His papers have appeared in a number of research outlets, including Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and the INFORMS Journal on Computing. Mehmet Demirci (“ Production Planning with Patterns: A Problem from Processed Food Manufacturing ”) is a supply chain sales engineer at SmartOps. He holds a Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include inventory optimization, operations management, large-scale combinatorial optimization, and operations research applications in health care. Sven de Vries (“ An Ascending Vickrey Auction for Selling Bases of a Matroid ”) is a professor of operations research in the Department of Mathematics at the Universität Trier. His research interests include combinatorial optimization and auctions. Xiaowei Ding (“ A Top-Down Approach to Multiname Credit ”) is an associate at Morgan Stanley's Commodity Trading Group. Mohsen ElHafsi (“ Optimal Control of an Assembly System with Multiple Stages and Multiple Demand Classes ”) is a professor at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Riverside, where he also serves as associate dean and graduate advisor. He holds Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees from the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at the University of Florida and was the Honor Graduate. He received the Qualified Engineer degree, with honors, from the Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tunis, Tunisia. His area of research includes operations and supply chain management, manufacturing and service operations, and production and inventory systems. Amr Farahat (“ A Comparison of Bertrand and Cournot Profits in Oligopolies with Differentiated Products ”) is an assistant professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He obtained his doctoral degree in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on differentiated product pricing, inventory management, and competition. He is interested in problems at the interface of operations management, economics, and marketing. Vivek F. Farias (“ The Irrevocable Multiarmed Bandit Problem ”) is the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Assistant Professor of Management at the Sloan School of Management and the Operations Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on revenue management, dynamic optimization, and the analysis of complex stochastic systems. The paper in this issue is part of the author's research in the context of dynamic optimization. David Gamarnik (“ Performance Analysis of Queueing Networks via Robust Optimization ”) is an associate professor of operations research at the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include applied probability and stochastic processes, theory of random combinatorial structures and algorithms, and various applications. He currently serves as an associate editor of Annals of Applied Probability, Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research, and queueing systems journals. Srinagesh Gavirneni (“ Production Planning with Patterns: A Problem from Processed Food Manufacturing ”) is an assistant professor of operations management in the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. His research interests are in the areas of supply chain management, inventory control, production scheduling, simulation, and optimization. His papers have appeared in Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Operations Research Letters, IIE Transactions, and Interfaces. Previously he was an assistant professor in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, the chief algorithm design engineer of SmartOps, a software architect at Maxager Technology Inc., and a research scientist with Schlumberger. His undergraduate degree from IIT-Madras is in mechanical engineering, and he received an M.Sc. from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Kay Giesecke (“ A Top-Down Approach to Multiname Credit ”) is assistant professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. His research and teaching interests are in financial engineering. Lisa R. Goldberg (“ A Top-Down Approach to Multiname Credit ”) is executive director of analytic initiatives at MSCI Barra with responsibility for developing and prototyping financial risk and valuation models. Randolph W. Hall (“ Discounted Robust Stochastic Games and an Application to Queueing Control ”) is vice president of research, and professor of industrial and systems engineering, at the University of Southern California. After receiving a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, he has held research and faculty positions at General Motors, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California, including dir

Contributors

"Professor Boateng has done industry, government, and academia a huge favor by producing a truly comprehensive reference guide book filled with most of the terms associated with most aspects of supply chain management. Both local and global C-Suite executives, policy makers, academics and the like will immensely benefit from this handy compilation." -Dr Mohan Kaul. Executive Chairman, Commonwealth Investment Corporation, London. "A must have for supply chain management academics and practitioners. This revised edition offers the most comprehensive vocabularies associated with supply chain management to date." -I.M. Ambe, Professor of Supply Chain Management and Head of SCM Group, UNISA "The need to improve supply chain management understanding is increasingly becoming strategically important to business and society. Today, it is still relatively opinion rich and nomenclature poor. Without doubt, the 2nd edition of Professor Boateng's compendium has come at the right time to help correct the anomaly." -Dr Patricia Makhesha, Managing Director, Platreef Project, Ivanplats. Professor Douglas BOATENG (MSc, EngD, FCILT, FOE, FIPlantE, FCMI, FIC, Finst. D FIOM FCIPS, FloD, CDir), Africa's first ever appointed Professor Extraordinaire for supply and value chain management (SBL UNISAJ, is an International Professional certified Chartered Director and an adjunct academic. Independently recognised as one of the vertical specific global strategic thinkers on procurement, governance, logistics, and industrial engineering in the context of supply and value chain management, he continues to play leading academic and industrial roles in supply chain strategy development and implementation, both in Africa, and around the world. He holds, amongst other qualifications, an Institute of Directors Graduate Certificate and Diploma in Company Direction, and a Doctor of Engineering (Warwick). He is also an elected FELLOW of Institute of Directors-UK & South Africa; Society of Operations Engineers- UK; Institution of Plant Engineers- UK; Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport-UK & South Africa; Chartered Management Institute - UK; Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply- UK; Institute of Business Consulting -UK; and the Institute of Operations Management- UK. Recognised for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of local and international aspects of supply chain management he was bestowed with a Platinum Life Time Global Achievers Award (2016) and a Life Time Achievers Award (2013) by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, and its various local industry associations. In 2016, Professor Boateng was honoured by CEO Titans Building Nations with a Life time Achievers Award for exceptional work done in the area of industrial engineering, procurement, and supply chain management in a developing world context. He has also been publicly acknowledged by leading institutions, including the Commonwealth Business Council, for his ongoing contribution to the rapidly emerging concept of strategic sourcing and its inextricable link to Africa's long-term industrialisation and socio-economic development. He has been an elected member of the UK's Institute of Directors for over 20 years, and continues to assist organisations and CEOs with board level, directional, and governance matters. In addition, Professor Boateng has been publicly acknowledged by leading institutions, including the Commonwealth Business Council, for his ongoing contribution to international procurement, supply chain development and governance, and its link to emerging world long term socio-economic development.

Supply chain management (SCM), which generally refers to horizontal integration management, has steadily become the core competitiveness of company rivalry and an essential approach to developing national comprehensive and national strength since the end of the 20th century due to the numerous needs arising from a competitive international economy. Manufacturers develop a community of interest by forming long-term strategic partnerships with suppliers and vendors throughout the supply chain. This paper defines supply chain management by reviewing the existing literature and discusses the current state of supply chain management research, as well as prospective research directions. Specifically, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the influential studies of SCM in terms of various aspects, such as research areas, journals, countries/regions, institutions, authors and corresponding authors, most cited publications, and author keywords, based on the 8998 reviews and articles collected from the SCI and SSCI database of the Web of Science (WoS) between 2010 and 2020. The results show that the major research areas were Management (3071, 34.13%), Operations Research & Management Science (2680, 29.78%), and Engineering, Industrial (1854, 20.60%) with TP and TPR%. The most productive journal and institution were J. Clean Prod and Hong Kong Polytech Univ with a TP of 554 and 238, respectively. China, USA, and UK were the top three contributing countries. Furthermore, “sustainability”, “green supply chain (management)”, and “sustainable supply chain (management)” were the most popular author keywords in recent three years and since 2010, apart from the author keywords of SCM. When combined with the most cited articles in recent years, the application of block chain and Industry 4.0 in supply chain management increased rapidly and generated great attention.

Contributors

Global marketplaces, higher levels of product variety, shorter product life cycles, and demand for premium customer services are all things which cause pressure for one supply chain to be more efficient, more time compressed and more cost effective. This has become even more critical in recent years because the advancement in information technology has enabled companies to improve their supply chain strategies and explore new models for management of supply chain activity. Among others, important research area in the supply chain management literature is the coordination of the supply chain. Actually, the understanding and practicing of supply chain coordination has become an essential prerequisite for staying competitive in the global race and for enhancing profitability. Hence, supply chain management needs to be defined to explicitly recognise the strategic nature of coordination and information sharing between trading partners and to explain the dual purpose of supply chain management: to improve the performance of an individual organisation an to improve the performance of the whole supply chain. In this context, we present the business process reengineering as a tool for achievinging effective supply chain management, and illustrate through a case study how business process modelling can help in achieving successful improvements in sharing information and the coordination of supply chain processes. It is well recognised that advances in information technologies have driven much change through supply chain and logistics management services. Traditionally, the management of information has been somewhat neglected. The method of information transferring carried out by memebers of the supply chain has consisted of placing orders with the member directly above them. This caused many problems in the supply chain including: excessive inventory holding, longer lead times and reduced service levels in addition to increased demand variability or the ‘Bullwhip Effect’. Thus, as supply chain management progresses, supply chain managers are realising the need to utilise improved information sharing throughout the supply chain in order to have coordinated supply chain and to remain competitive. However, coordination is not just a mere information sharing. Information can be shared but there may not be any alignment in terms of incentives, objectives and decisions (Lee et al., 1997b). Coordination involves alignments of decisions, objectives and incentives and this can be done only through new reengineered business process models, which need to follow the information sharing. Appropriate business processes are a prerequisite for the strategic

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe an emergent supply chain management system that supports a sustainable values based organization (VBO) using a structuration theory‐based framework.Design/methodology/approachA case study of a sustainable beef cooperative employing a structuration theory framework provides insights into sustainable supply chain management models.FindingsThe supply chain design and management afford the key to the VBO's success. In order to attain the necessary price premium, the unique product attributes acquired through the natural beef production process must be sustained along the entire supply chain and communicated to the end customer. Structuration theory is useful in understanding supply chain management in VBOs.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper has implications for studying VBOs, particularly those prioritizing sustainability values. The descriptive model presented is useful in settings where organizational structure and the supply chain are needed to support sustainable products and processes and whose success is facilitated by establishing strategic partners, especially those that make possible economies of scale. The study is limited to one, privately owned firm, operating in a specialty industry sector.Practical implicationsThe paper has implications for those entities with an identified values set that endows the product with unique characteristics that must be conveyed to their end consumer in order to command a price premium and/or differentiate the product from a commodity. The case study provides an example of how a unique product as well as a facilitating organizational structure and supply chain emerge out of the application of a set of core values.Originality/valueLittle previous research focuses on implications of supply chain management in VBOs. In addition, the paper contributes to both the supply chain management and sustainability literature by relating supply chain management to a more comprehensive sustainability agenda including social, environmental, and long‐term economic sustainability and by a theoretically based structuring.

This research introduces a groundbreaking approach to supply chain optimization and management, termed as Deep Reinforcement Learning based Supply Chain Optimization and Management (DRL-SCOM). At the core of this approach is the utilization of advancements in Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), specifically through the integration of Randomized Ensembled Double Q-learning (REDQ) and Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO). DRL-SCOM is designed to effectively tackle the inherent complexities and dynamic challenges that are characteristic of supply chain management. One of the key strengths of DRL-SCOM lies in its use of REDQ, which plays a crucial role in mitigating the overestimation bias commonly associated with traditional Q-learning methods. This results in more accurate value estimation and policy improvement, a critical factor in the effective management of supply chains. Additionally, the integration of TRPO into the framework brings the advantage of safe and stable policy updates. Such stability is vital for maintaining the robustness required in the fluctuating environment of supply chain operations. The combination of REDQ and TRPO in DRL-SCOM creates a powerful synergy. REDQ’s ensembled learning approach, when fused with TRPO’s trust-region method, enables the framework to efficiently navigate the complex and high-dimensional decision space typical of supply chains. This allows for real-time optimization of decisions while staying within operational constraints. The DRL-SCOM methodology shows significant potential in addressing various aspects of supply chain management, from demand forecasting and inventory management to logistics, adeptly handling the nonlinearities and uncertainties that are prevalent in these areas. Thus, the DRL-SCOM framework emerges as an innovative solution, pushing the frontiers of traditional supply chain management. It paves the way for a more agile, responsive, and intelligent system, equipped to adapt to changing market demands and operational challenges. This approach represents a significant stride towards transforming supply chain management into a more advanced, data-driven, and adaptive field.

"This is a must for all practitioners, scholars and researchers on strategic sourcing. It succinctly provides invaluable information which is logically supported by the facts. It should be the resource for all current and aspiring supply chain professionals keen to learn more about the strategic connection between sourcing, company and industrial competitiveness, service delivery quality and national and regional development." -Intaher Ambe, Professor of Supply Chain Management: School of Management Sciences, UNISA "This Executive Insights into Strategic Sourcing is an essential and thought provoking resource for all directors, new and experienced, of government, public and private sector organisations. Not only does Professor Boateng provide insightful reflections on the role of strategic sourcing in national development, he also concisely blends research, real world data and best practices and experiences that help decision makers initiate sourcing practices for maximum long -term company and societal benefit." - Lebogang Letsoalo, Vice President, Supply Chain Management: Sasol Base Chemicals Professor Douglas BOATENG (MSc, EngD, FCILT, FSOE, FIPlantE, FCMI, FIC, FInst. D FIOM FCIPS, FloD, CDir), Africa's first ever appointed Professor Extraordinaire for supply and value chain management (SBL UNISA), is an International Professional certified Chartered Director and an adjunct academic. Independently recognised as one of the vertical specific global strategic thinkers on procurement, governance, logistics, and industrial engineering in the context of supply and value chain management, he continues to play leading academic and industrial roles in supply chain strategy development and implementation, both in Africa, and around the world. He holds, amongst other qualifications, an Institute of Directors Graduate Certificate and Diploma in Company Direction, and a Doctor of Engineering (Warwick). He is also an elected FELLOW of Institute of Directors-UK & South Africa; Society of Operations Engineers-UK; Institution of Plant Engineers- UK; Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport-UK & South Africa; Chartered Management Institute- UK; Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply- UK; Institute of Business Consulting -UK; and the Institute of Operations Management-UK. Recognised for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of local and international aspects of supply chain management he was bestowed with a Platinum Life Time Global Achievers Award (2016) and a Life Time Achievers Award (2013) by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, and its various local industry associations. In 2016, Professor Boateng was honoured by CEO Titans Building Nations with a Life time Achievers Award for exceptional work done in the area of industrial engineering, procurement, and supply chain management in a developing world context. He has also been publicly acknowledged by leading institutions, including the Commonwealth Business Council, for his ongoing contribution to the rapidly emerging concept of strategic sourcing and its inextricable link to Africa's long-term industrialisation and socio-economic development. He has been an elected member of the UK's Institute of Directors for over 20 years, and continues to assist organisations and CEOs with board level, directional, and governance matters. In addition, Professor Boateng has been publicly acknowledged by leading institutions, including the Commonwealth Business Council, for his ongoing contribution to international procurement, supply chain development and governance, and its link to emerging world long-term socioeconomic development.

PurposeConventional wisdom posits that firms in slow clockspeed industries usually favor exploitation over exploration, prioritizing the need to increase efficiency, reduce costs and invest in process improvements. However, what happens when such firms face structural changes in the long run? The authors claim that even firms in slow clockspeed industries should be ambidextrous, that is, they should develop both exploration and exploitation capabilities. Supply chain (SC) managers are key players in enabling organizational ambidexterity. This paper aims to identify the abilities that characterize the ambidextrous SC managers.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected data from an in-depth case study through ethnographic research, non-participant observation and interviews with SC managers at a Brazilian chemical firm embedded in a slow clockspeed network of clients. These longitudinal data were used to demonstrate the process of implementing new projects in an SC department.FindingsThe authors propose a set of key abilities that enable ambidexterity in SC managers for them to contribute effectively to the SC exploration and exploitation practices: a holistic yet focused view; prior experience in multiple functional areas; technical knowledge; openness towards network connectivity; openness to sharing ideas with other managers; empathy; and entrepreneurial capabilities.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper contributes to the SCM ambidexterity literature by bringing to light the abilities of successful ambidextrous SC managers. The seven abilities identified are discussed. The authors formulate theoretical propositions on how these abilities enable SC managers’ ambidexterity.Practical implicationsThis study provides SC managers with the knowledge of a set of individual abilities they should develop among their SC personnel to offer a more suitable environment in their departments for ambidexterity to take place. In addition, these abilities can be used as screening criteria in personnel selection processes to increase the proportion of ambidextrous employees within the firm. The identified characteristics could also be used as recruitment criteria for managerial positions in SCM.Originality/valueThis research advances SC literature by studying SC managers through the lens of the organizational ambidexterity literature. Using a combination of case study, non-participant observation and ethnographic research, the authors derive a set of propositions for the characteristics of ambidextrous SC managers.

Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) constitute the majority of firms in the construction industry and are therefore of prime importance in the construction supply chain. Despite this fact, little attention has been paid to SMEs with respect to supply chain management (SCM). SMEs in Australia were surveyed, via a postal questionnaire, to identify business strategies, current SCM practices, the concerns and the barriers that SMEs encountered in developing an integrated supply chain. Following the surveys, face-to-face interviews with construction professionals were also conducted to obtain their views on these issues and to seek strategies to overcome such barriers/concerns. Amongst the research outcomes it was found that the SMEs’ business strategies are mainly focused on improving profit growth, providing a high quality product and lowering total deliver costs. It is also found that the SCM practice by the SMEs typically aims to reduce the delivery time of materials, and determine customers’ future needs. On the other hand, the research found that at the same time SMEs are concerned with the lack of interest among suppliers and customers, lack of sophisticated information systems and competition from other supply chains. It is also found that the price/contract/project-based relationship between the main contractor and subcontractors is the main barrier hinders supply chain integration and management. However, the research found that SMEs do not seem to be concerned with a lack of trust and cooperation among supply chain members as this is usually covered by contractual relationships. It is found that there is a need to improve project coordination and information sharing, as well as shortening time to respond to requests for information. Further to these, the research found that the level of e-commerce practice by the SMEs has improved in recent years and this provides a good platform for the integration of SMEs into the construction supply chain through e-commerce. Despite the above provisos the findings reflected that supply chain integration is an important issue for construction SMEs and the use of compatible information system will increase the supply chain integration and management and hence improve the performance of the entire construction supply chain.