Supply Chain Management Practices as a Support to Innovation in SMEs

Supply chain management (SCM) is an area of increasing importance among enterprises and of growing academic interest (Mentzer and Gundlach, 2010). It is based on the concept of firms as part of multiple organizations oriented to the provision of goods and services for the final customer (Lambert and Cooper, 2000). From this perspective, several studies have verified that integration and collaboration in the supply chain can provide important benefits to the companies involved. Among these benefits are added value, the creation of efficiencies and client satisfaction (Stock, Boyer and Harmon, 2010; Chow et al, 2008), which are represented by the reduction in inventories, improvements in service delivery and quality and shorter product development cycles (Corbett, Blackburn and Wassenhove, 1999)