The Supply Chain Improvement Through Primary Collaboration. An Action Research Experience
Collaboration among companies arises as one of the key factors that could increase the supply chain performance. This collaboration is more difficult if these companies have the same status in the supply chain and they are small and medium sized companies
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Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, University of Vigo, Campus Lagoas-Marcosende, 36310 Vigo, Spain {jgarca,jcprado,tgonzalez-portela}@uvigo.es
Abstract. Collaboration among companies arises as one of the key factors that could increase the supply chain performance. This collaboration is more difficult if these companies have the same status in the supply chain and they are small and medium sized companies. In this context, the aim of this paper is to propose and validate a methodology for achieving confidence for primary collaboration throughout the food supply chain and as a previous step for developing “collab‐ oration networks”. In the paper, the authors have adopted the “Action research” approach, leading and coordinating a Collaboration Project among 10 food companies and 5 agricultural cooperatives. Keywords: Supply chain · Logistics · Collaboration · Cluster
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Introduction
In global markets, companies should face the constant innovation of new products, decreasing life cycles, and product variety; they also should deal with the demand for lower prices, and higher quality and service standards. This happens in increasingly turbulent and volatile markets, which has forced many companies to improve processes along the supply chain, as a mean to achieve competitive advantages (Gonzalez-Loureiro et al. 2014; García-Arca et al. 2016). In this context, the organizational redesign contributes to the search for more effec‐ tive and sustainable alternatives in managing the supply chain (Huo 2012). Going into further detail in this organizational redesign, collaboration among companies (suppliers, retailers, third party logistics,…) arises as one of the key factors that could ease the competitiveness´ improvement (Wiengarten and Longoni 2015; Pérez-Mesa and Galdeano-Gómez 2015). The traditional collaboration among companies could be analyzed from two different perspectives (Barrat 2004; Wilhelm 2011): on one hand, from a vertical perspective (different companies up and down throughout the supply chain; for example, supplierretailer); on the other hand, from a horizontal perspective (between different companies that act at the same level in the supply chain; for example, different suppliers). If we compare both perspectives, we could state that the horizontal collaboration has a worst analysis in recent literature (Choi and Wu 2009; Pérez-Mesa and Galdeano-Gómez © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016 Published by Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. All Rights Reserved H. Afsarmanesh et al. (Eds.): PRO-VE 2016, IFIP AICT 480, pp. 618–625, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-45390-3_53
The Supply Chain Improvement Through Primary Collaboration
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2015) as it could be considered more complex and dynamic (Wilhelm 2011). Thus, in a vertical collaboration, the retailer often used to be the leader and the promotor, but in a horizontal collaboration, it is not so clear who is the company that plays this role. In this sense, researchers could play the role of promotors and coordinators of this pot
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