EFFECTIVENESS FRAMEWORK FOR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Modern manufacturing businesses rely heavily on the abilities of their suppliers, who in turn rely on the companies that supply them. This has increased the need for companies to understand and manage chains proactively to ensure all chain members are working to achieve end-customer service objectives. The ESPRIT II CIM for Multi-Supplier Operations (CMSO) project (2277), is researching the IT implications of intercompany operations. Involving academic, industrial and software partners, the pan-European research is innovating methodologies, tools, simulations and architectures. These form a cohesive suite to enable companies to analyse their problems from an interorganizational perspective, design and implement IT solutions to solve these problems and measure their performance in terms of improvements in the service offered to end-customers. This paper describes one of the products of this research - the Effectiveness Framework - a methodology for identifying and analysing supply chain problems that may conflict with end-customer service objectives. This methodology has been designed primarily for key players in supply chains which can influence the rest of the chain. However, other chain players may benefit by using the methodology to understand their role in a chain and who the key player is. The framework is now being tested in a variety of supply chains in the automotive industry, particularly in the aftermarket; the testing is spearheaded by a collaborative team from Warwick Business School and Lucas Industries. © 1990.