Search

Organisations focus on having an excellent supply chain to increase net income. But how to measure excellence in a supply chain? This paper is concerned with excellence within Supply Chain Management (SCM) and how this can be measured. The focus is on identifying and suggesting a model that can be used for measuring excellence in a supply chain. The result from a study of 30 companies with the aim to investigate how companies in 10 different sectors are working with supply chain excellence is an origin for the model. The paper suggests a coordinate and cooperate model, or index figure, that is based on a combination of the cost for the supply chain and performance towards the customer.

A critical issue for a company to gain a competitive position is to improve its supply chain performance. This study investigates with interviews how 30 Swedish companies in ten different sectors define an excellent supply chain and work with Supply Chain Management, performance measurements and Supply Chain Costs. It shows that the companies define excellence more by a performance focus than a cost focus. Delivery precision, inventory turnovers (days of inventory) and lead time are the most common performance measurements. The costs of the supply chain are measured in many different ways and with different accuracy.