Journal of Transport and Supply Chain Management (Aug 2015)
Benchmarking supply chain management practices in a South African confectionery manufacturing organisation
Abstract
Background: In an increasingly competitive business world, businesses need to be able to measure the effectiveness of their supply chain management process practices against proven best practice frameworks. A number of these frameworks exist internationally but have to be used within the context of knowing the relative strengths and weaknesses of potential benchmarking frameworks. Two such frameworks were identified in the research and a case was made to use one such framework, the Global Supply Chain Forum (GSCF) framework, to measure the effectiveness of the supply chain practices of a leading confectionery manufacturing company in South Africa. Objective of the research: The purpose of the research was to identify an international best practice framework, which could be used by South African manufacturing organisations to benchmark their supply chain management (SCM) practices. Methodology: The methodology followed was a literature review of the existing SCM frameworks to identify a framework, which would be the most suited to the objective of the study, followed by a case study of a leading manufacturing organisation’s SCM practices benchmarked against those found in the framework. Results and conclusions: The main finding of the case study was that there is a high degree of adherence between the case study organisation’s SCM practices and those found in the SCM framework. There was also generally a high level of importance ascribed by respondents to the best practices contained by the GSCF framework. It was therefore concluded that the GSCF framework proved to be a useful instrument for a comprehensive analysis of supply chain management processes and practices for a manufacturer in the fast moving consumer goods industry, with potential for applications by organisations in the supply chains of other industries.
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