Contributions to Journals

Identifying the Characteristics of the Supply Chain Processes in Developing Country: A Manufacturing Industry Perspective

Abstract

Lack of appropriate tools to model, evaluate and improve the supply chain is considered as one of the initiatives to major challenges to promote improvement among the firms in developing countries. The basic constituent of such models is the business processes. Firms in developing countries are lagging behind the recent trends of practices and researches. For continuous and sustainable improvement program that involves the entire supply chain including developing countries, it is necessary to have a well designed supply chain models that also consider the firms of the developing countries. The existing successful process-oriented models are highly dependent on the current business practices of the companies of the developed world. For both the new development and adapting of the successful models require the understanding of the characteristics of the existing supply chain processes and practices in the firms in a developing country. The aim of this article is to identify the main characteristics of the current supply chain processes of the firms of the developing country based on the SCOR model business processes: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver and Return. The research methodology includes the literature review, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview. The research data was collected from the Ethiopian manufacturing industries practices. Finally, the research findings reveal the characteristics of the supply chain processes. The identified processes characteristics could be used for the future model adaptation works.