عملکرد توسعه تامین کننده: مشکلات ناشی از تحویل بالادستی برای شرکت های کوچک و متوسط توزیع مواد غذایی در انگلستان

The paper aims to emphasize on the impacts of the supplier development on reducing the defects in supplier quality for a food distribution small–medium sized enterprise (SME). An empirical study was conducted to measure the performance of the suppliers in three different key performance indicators of the outsourcing and supplier’s performance to arise the existing problems via information exchange, data collection and data analysis. It was found that supplier development through data and information exchange and better communication by any food distribution SME raises the problems more promptly. This can dramatically change the supplier’s behavior to improve the quality of the supplier’s service and products. It is suggested that more research is required to raise other key performance indicators and their related problems and to develop more improvement practices. Six sigma methodologies could be the potential good practices to be focused in future research studies. Supplier performance measurement, which encompasses data exchange and data collection, develops the systematic flow of information, which potentially improves the flow of goods and the whole food supply chain to address the final consumer satisfaction. The research took a novel approach in adopting some transport related key performance indicators of the food supply to the food distribution and retailing sector, which is almost a new approach in food industry.

Supply chain management (SCM) has always been a key element of a successful and competitive business. It consists of managing different levels of internal or external organizational transactions, which generally represent the flow of goods and flow of information. There have been different understandings of SCM most of which reflect the need for the customer development and logistics. Arguably, in its most advanced form, SCM is not a subset of logistics but is a broad strategy, which cuts across business processes both within the firm and through the channels required to reach the customer and involves the firm’s suppliers[1]. It appears that supplier development alongside the customer development builds the structure of supply chain management. There have been different studies, which indicate that the proper management of supplier relationships constitutes one essential element on supply chain success [1], [2], [3] and [4]. The literature has emphasized greater collaboration between the firms and their suppliers to assure an efficient and successful supply chain [5]. Over the last decade, researchers have empirically investigated a variety of research issues that are related to supplier development activities. These issues include critical factors of supplier development [6] and [7]; the process of supplier development [8], [9] and [10]; the factors that influence buying firm’s involvement in developing their suppliers[11]; and the effect of technical support provided to suppliers on the performance of both suppliers [12] and [13] and buyers [14]. Supplier development, as an important construction block of the supply chain, has been adopted in this study to evaluate its effectiveness in a tailored industry with a variety of supply concerns. This paper intends to focus on supplier development in order to investigate the effect of a systematic quality improvement strategy on improving the supplier’s efficiency and supplier service quality in a food chain. One of the most common characteristics of the food chain is meeting the customer’s requirement, which is challenging. This has been addressed in some literature [8], [9] and [10] in which supplier development has been introduced as the effective way that improves supplier’s capabilities to meet buyer’s requirement. The most useful elements of supplier development, which potentially can improve the supplier’s service quality are examined in this paper.

It is concluded that, supplier development practices in a food supply chain have dramatic impact on the supplier’s performance in providing better service and product quality for the end consumer. The result in Fig. 6 represents that quality of five different delivery aspects improved significantly from average score of −30 to more than 150 for the “In goods” container after developing the supplier performance. There are different approaches and practices of the supplier development, which could be adopted to improve the performance of the supplier. According to the literature review, the attribute of the supplier development for this specific case would be the basic, direct and reactive approach, which contains the elements of regular information sharing, feedback, supplier evaluation and basic communications. This type of approach is important in complex supply chain networks such as food supply chain where the flow of information path might be different with the flow of goods path. It is recommended to have more research studies on the systematic approach to detect the root causes of the defect in this case. The six sigma methodology of define, measure, analyse, improve, control (DMAIC) is a reactive method to find the root causes of the defect and optimum solution. The methodology of DMAIC is a reactive approach to develop the supplier, since the design for six sigma (DFSS) is a proactive approach, which helps the supplier to improve the performance.