Strategic Management (Jan 2015)
The integration of the supply chain: Rationalization vs. Synergy
Abstract
Management can improve results of enterprises, above all, by an innovative re-allocation of available resources and a synergetic integration of their working. A significant factor of the quality of management in enterprises such as business systems (BSs) is their restructuring by an innovative integration aimed at achieving better business results through synergetic effects. BSs can improve cooperation between their parts or their cooperation in broader integrations. Our research is focused on the supply chain (SC) as an instance of a possible integration of logistics in or between BSs and on the economic reasonableness of their participation in an SC, aiming to take advantages of value chains. In practice, each BS can create its own SC or can participate in broader SCs. For that reason, the economics of the participation of a BS’s parts in an SC, and BSs as parts in broader SCs, are considered. Additionally, the business processes of an SC are examined as the cybernetic entities of the basic, management, and information partial systems of the participating BSs. To create an integration process, the concept of Business Re-Engineering, which enables the simultaneous realization of both rationalization and synergetic effects and their direct support to the creation and exploitation of a competitive advantage of value chains in an SC, is applied.
