Assessing supply chain flexibility: a conceptual framework and case study

Abstract

Flexibility has been considered as a major determinant of competitiveness in an increasingly intense competition in the marketplace. A large body of literature has been addressing various issues of flexibility in the last two decades. However, the discussions have mainly been from the viewpoint of a manufacturing company as a single entity in a supply chain. The flexibility related to machine, process, routing, part, worker and the like are all associated with a manufacturing or a production system. With the advent of the supply chain management concepts, business communities have been realising that being flexible in a production system only is insufficient. Thus, flexibility concepts should be broadened from the perspective of a production system into a supply chain system. However, the study addressing supply chain flexibility is still limited. This paper presents a framework for assessing flexibility of a supply chain. Four main parts of flexibility are identified including flexibility of the product delivery system, production system, product development, and supply system. In each of these parts, a number of pertinent elements are defined. A general guideline for conducting flexibility assessment is also presented. In an attempt to assess the model validity, a case study also forms a part of the paper.

Building resilient relationships with suppliers in the B2B market

“…The science has already explored supplier fl exibility (Fantazy et al 2009) and sourcing fl exibility (Pujawan 2004) that are recognized by the author as Supplier Relationship Flexibility (SRF). However there is still a lack of publications on Supplier Relationship Adaptability (SRA).…”

“…As it is apparent from the global survey conducted by PwC (2013, pp. [16][17], companies are increasingly interested in building fl exible supply chains, seeing in this approach an important opportunity to maximize the created value. Mendonça Tachizawa and Giménez Thomsen (2007) indicate that the fl exibility of supplier relationships allows to respond to the disruptions on which occurrence the purchasing department does not have a direct infl uence (table 1).…”

“…Today, co-operation with at least two qualifi ed suppliers for each purchased good or having a sourcing back up is almost a standard in the era of the observed crises. Enterprises, using both initial and periodic evaluation of suppliers, should strive for a situation in which (Pujawan 2004):   costs of switching the orders from one to another supplier of the same item is low for most cases, Vol. 20, No.…”

“…Having the possibility of choosing the fastest means of transport at a relatively low cost, supports quick reacting to the environmental changes (Pujawan 2004).…”

A discount ordering strategy in two-level supply chain: A case study of textile industry

“…Degraeve et al (2004) performed an investigation on different models and compared the relative efficiency of them. Pujawan (2004) provided a conceptual model for supplier selection based on different criteria including production flexibility, delivery, product development, etc. Aissaoui et al (2007) proposed some new methods for categorizing supplier selection strategies based on single or multi products.…”