SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE: FRAMEWORK FOR STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING

Fast paced technological innovation in the 21st century is continuously transforming the complex world of logistics, a performant strategy in the supply chain (SC) becoming a competitive advantage that all manufacturers strive to improve. Decision making to ensure the expected outcome is relying heavily on the SC with its associated partnerships and drivers. Customer service evolves at the same pace with technological innovation and it is backed up by qualitative and innovative SC processes, transferring the most important order winner criteria from the product itself to the product cycle from forecast to delivery. Manufacturers have to consider that integrating customers’ needs in the design of their supply chain strategy (SCS) is going to become an order qualifier, rather than an order winner criterion. Internal and external integration foster progress and development in the organizational and financial performance of the company. This implies not only a financial investment in the subsequent infrastructure but also a tailored strategy that employs advantages derived from supply chain integration (SCI). The present paper proposes a structured framework that middle and top management can use to identify synergies for integration opportunities, exploitable competitive advantages and markers for improving decision making affected by and affecting financial performance. Supply chain management (SCM) strategy can be viewed as a revolving concept as it can be both a driver of performance as well as a consequence of performance. The first concept is at the centre of the paper as the authors strive to create a framework of operational and strategic factors that foster performance, assuming that levels of performance can conversely steer SCM strategies. Operational strategies, supply chain integration, management and strategies are leading the research field in the attempt to interlink SC and performance, mainly due to a surge in the attention paid to the connection and synergies in between