دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 19175
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

آشنایی با مبادلات پایاپای در فرآیند انتخاب تامین کننده: نقش انعطاف پذیری، تحویل، و ارزش افزوده خدمات / پشتیبانی

عنوان انگلیسی
Understanding trade-offs in the supplier selection process: The role of flexibility, delivery, and value-added services/support
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
19175 2009 12 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : International Journal of Production Economics, Volume 120, Issue 1, July 2009, Pages 30–41

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
انتخاب تامین کننده - تحقیقات تجربی - فرآیندهای انتخاب
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
Supplier selection, Empirical research, Choice processes,
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله   آشنایی با مبادلات پایاپای در فرآیند انتخاب تامین کننده: نقش انعطاف پذیری، تحویل، و ارزش افزوده خدمات / پشتیبانی

چکیده انگلیسی

In this study, we present, based on econometric choice modeling framework, how manufacturing managers/executives trade-off between cost, delivery, flexibility, and service features in the supplier selection process for commodity raw materials, given acceptable quality. Empirical data for this study was collected from manufacturing organizations in Europe (Germany, France, Italy, and UK) using a computer-based supplier selection discrete choice survey. Each survey instrument contained 16 supplier selection choice sets, which compared 23 attributes of the current suppliers with a “new” potential supplier. The attributes of new suppliers were varied across two to four levels using established factorial experimental design procedures. The resultant multinomial logit models show the relative impact of cost, flexibility, delivery and service features on supplier selection.

مقدمه انگلیسی

Over the last thirty years, supply chain management (SCM) and the supplier selection processes have received considerable attention in the operations management literature (Miller et al., 1981). Several scholars have emphasized the multi-disciplinary nature of supply chains and suggested that the use of economics and marketing-based methods can further increase the effectiveness of SCM (e.g. Bankar and Khoska, 1995; Karmarkar, 1996). For example, as outsourcing becomes more important in many industries, the supplier selection process does as well (Kannan and Tan, 2002; Yan et al., 2003; Choy et al., 2003 and Choy et al., 2004; Li et al., 2006). In addition, with the rapid proliferation of information sharing across supply chains, the importance of supplier management has been amplified during recent years (e.g. Fine, 1998; Hanfield and Nichols, 1999; Kaplan and Sawhney, 2000; Simchi-Levi et al., 2000; Hall and Braithwaite, 2001). A number of empirical studies also show that managers indeed consider the role of the supplier to be critical for superior business performance (e.g. Flynn et al., 1994; Choi and Hartley, 1996; Vonderembse and Tracey, 1999; González et al., 2004). While the academic literature is very comprehensive, the effective evaluation and selection of suppliers for important raw materials continues to be challenging in many industries. In this context, the past research shows that firms use price and a number of other dimensions such as quality, flexibility, delivery, and service in the supplier selection process (e.g. Dickson, 1966; Hirakubo and Kublin, 1998; Li et al., 2006; Sarkis and Talluri, 2002; Verma and Pullman, 1998; Wilson, 1994). Broadly speaking, supplier selection trade-offs correspond well with various competitive priorities identified by and explored extensively in the operations strategy research (e.g. Hayes and Wheelwright, 1984; Boyer and Lewis, 2002). The supplier selection literature is also rich in terms of conceptual models, decision support systems, simulation studies, and empirical analyses related to the vendor evaluation (e.g. Pearn et al., 2004; Bhutta and Huq, 2002; Chan, 2003; Chan and Chan 2004; Onesime et al., 2004; Basnet and Leung, 2005; Valluri and Croson, 2005; Carter and Jennings, 2004; Kamann and Bakker, 2004; Lin et al., 2005). However, relatively little work has been done to integrate market utility-based approaches in the supplier selection processes as recommended by both classic and contemporary research in operations strategy (e.g Anderson et al., 1989; Vickery et al., 1993; Boyer et al., 1996). Market utility-based approaches such as discrete choice analysis (DCA) (also know as choice-based conjoint) can assess the relative weights of price, quality, delivery, flexibility, and various value-added features in various managerial decision-making processes (e.g. Ben-Akiva and Lerman, 1991; McFadden, 1986; Louviere et al., 2001). These methods have seen wide applications in many social sciences including marketing, transportation planning, environmental resource economics, service design, and operations management (e.g. Green and Krieger, 1996; Pullman and Moore, 1999; Pullman et al., 2001; Verma et al., 2001). Examples of discrete choice and conjoint analysis in operations management include product line decisions (e.g., Yano and Dobson, 1998); optimal service design (Verma et al., 2001); and operations capacity planning (Pullman and Moore, 1999). In addition, Ding et al. (2007), and Victorino et al. (2005) have applied discrete choice models in a variety of operational settings. Furthermore, an emerging emphasis on incorporating behavioral aspects into manufacturing and service operations models (Bendoly et al., 2006), portends future growth of DCA and related approaches in the operations management literature. As mentioned earlier, despite its advantages, DCA has only been used in a few papers related to supplier selection. Specifically, Verma and Pullman (1998) presented a simple illustration of DCA for supplier selection. They demonstrated that the managers’ perceived importance of supplier attributes such as quality, cost, delivery, and flexibility are not consistent with their actual choices. Li et al. (2006) extended the use of DCA in supplier selection literature by comparing the attributes of an existing supplier to that of a new supplier. They also extended the theoretical framework to include supplier switching inertia. Our paper adds to the above stream of evolving literature on the use of DCA in the supplier selection process. In this paper, we explore how executives trade-off amongst various competitive dimensions when selecting a supplier for important but commodity raw materials. The empirical context of our study is based on a commodity (aluminum profiles used in a variety of manufacturing industries) where quality is assessed as “conforming to specifications” and therefore is a necessary requirement or order qualifier for competing but is not an order winner. Based on literature review, it is our impression that supplier selection of such context has not been studied in detail before. Hence, in this experimental empirical study (details provided later) we assess the managerial trade-offs for cost, delivery performance, flexibility, and value-added service/support in a supplier selection process using a market utility-based approach (DCA). Specifically, we address the following research issues: Research Objective 1: How do managers trade-off between price and other competitive dimensions when choosing a supplier for commodity raw materials, given acceptable quality? Research Objective 2: What is the relative importance of value-added service and support when choosing a supplier for commodity raw materials, given acceptable quality? Similar research questions have been addressed in past research. However, as mentioned earlier, with the exception of two papers, a market utility-based approach has not been used to assess trade-offs in the supplier selection process. Our study also demonstrates a new approach for DCA suggested by Li et al. (2006), which allows us to compare potential new suppliers with the existing supplier, thereby isolating the associated trade-offs accurately. Furthermore, in today's business environment with the possibility to source raw materials from almost anywhere in the world, it is possible that cultural/national differences exist with-respect-to supplier evaluation and assessment (e.g. Hofstede, 2003; Schroeder and Flynn, 2001). Therefore after conducting the primary study in one country (Germany) we collected small samples of additional data from three other countries in Europe (UK, France, Italy). The supplementary dataset will also use to explore the following research issue: Research Objective 3: How do trade-offs in the supplier selection process differ across cultural/national regions? The rest of the manuscript is structured as follows: first, we review past research in supplier selection analysis. Second, we describe the research design including an overview of the DCA followed by the results of an empirical study conducted in four languages in Europe. Finally, we discuss the research and managerial implications of our work.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

Leading publications in business management emphasize the need for understanding manufacturing and supply chain related decisions and practices for improving the competitive position of a firm. Various publications argue that it is necessary for these managerial decisions and choices to be consistent with the corporate strategy for effective operations management. The objective of this research was to understand one strategic operating decision area: the supplier selection process. As more manufacturing organizations adopt extended-enterprise concepts, the role of supplier and supply chain management becomes even more important. Our study was designed primarily to study how managers’ trade-off among cost, value-added, delivery performance, and flexibility attributes when choosing a supplier for major components and/or raw materials, given acceptable quality. The results presented in this paper have important implications for operations strategy and supply chain management research. We found that overall the managers valued the suppliers’ flexibility the most, and in particular the attributes of manufacturing tolerances, product ranges, acceptance of small orders, and expertise with the use of alloys. Flexibility was followed by the cost variable in importance; especially respondents from Italy (and to a somewhat lesser degree those from France and the UK) indicated that the price was very important in the supplier selection process. Thus, our results do not only show which attributes are important in the supplier selection process, they also show a level of agreement with previous studies in cultural differences (Hofstede, 2003; Schroeder and Flynn, 2001). In this context it is interesting to note that although the Germans valued the cost subgroup as the least important out of the seven subgroups; the other respondents valued this attribute as the third most important overall. Furthermore, our research shows some interesting differences with past research. First of all we used the DCA approach in an innovative way as we had our respondents choose between their current supplier and a hypothetical new one, a method to our knowledge never applied before in the supplier selection literature. Also, past literature mostly agrees that quality, cost and delivery performance are the most important variables when selecting a supplier (except for Verma and Pullman, 1998), while in our research the quality was assessed as “conforming to specifications” and therefore not part of the attributes. As a result, we found that flexibility was the most important variable overall, followed by cost and delivery performance.