Sustainability of Supply Chain Performance Through Inventory and Collaboration Management: A Case of Transportation Fuel Companies in Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

The study was based on the theory of constraints which acknowledges that bottlenecks are systemic, unavoidable, and affect the performance of the organisational supply chain processes. In the study, poor inventory and collaboration management were identified as bottlenecks in the transportation fuel retail sector. Thus, identifying the indicators of poor fuel supply chain performance can assist the industry in achieving a sustainable performance. In the descriptive design, the researchers distributed objective questionnaires among fuel industry supply chain staff whose roles include inventory and collaboration management decisions which are strategic to supply chain performance. The respondents gave their views on the effect of selected inventory and collaboration management indicators on supply chain performance. The analysed results indicate that there is a positive relationship between both inventory and collaboration management and the fuel supply chain performance. These findings led to the conclusion that, achieving supply chain performance goals of profitability, customer satisfaction, internal process effectiveness and company growth requires management to implement inventory and collaboration management strategies. Therefore, fuel industry supply chain stakeholders including government, fuel companies, fuel suppliers, customers and third party logistics service providers need to cooperate and work together to pull the struggling fuel industry from the doldrums.